Exeamus omnes

The fact that Residence Permit (RP) holders have to obtain an Exit Permit each and every time they wish to leave the State of Qatar renders the place, essentially, a comfortable open prison. The basic idea of the exit permit is that nobody can leave without someone standing in and agreeing to pay the debts of the resident who's off on his hols, or going to Dubai to see his Beloved Wife for the weekend.

What renders this system ludicrous is that, for an additional fee, a Multiple Exit permit is obtainable at a cost of QAR500 and valid for a year. Putting aside for the moment the new rule that cancelling an existing multiple exit permit now costs an additional QAR500, which wasn't advertised at the time and is certainly not something The Goat signed up for, there seem to have been some additional changes.

Last weekend, The Goat attempted to leave the country with a suitcase full of some of his worldly goods. He used his ID card at the e-gate, and nothing happened. Now the e-gate facility coded on to The Goat's ID card should be valid for three years from August 2011, and it has functioned faultlessly on 23 occasions. The last two had some problems 'with the system' but the reader eventually decided to let The Goat out and back in again.

Last Thursday was a different story. After a total refusal of any e-gate machine to read the card, The Goat was forced to present his passport and lose yet another page to ink. The immigration official advised what the problem was: the exit permit was valid for passport only, and not for e-gate.

The Goat checked with an Emirati friend who had contacts in Qatari officialdom. Perceived wisdom from that source was that The Goat's sponsor had attempted to prevent The Goat from leaving the country and/or had screwed up the paperwork.

After returning to Qatar, The Goat checked with the firm's HR department, where he was told in No Uncertain Terms that any changes caused by HR to his permission to leave the country would have been advised in advance, but no, there were no known changes in Immigration systems.

So which is it? As usual, The Goat merely seeks knowledge of what the rules are, and what has caused a perfectly good e-gate permit suddenly to become a waste of money. And if you, dear reader, have an e-gate card, you might well be interested in learning if you need to do something about ensuring you can escape from Qatar before turning up at the airport.

The poll has now closed and the results are in.

• 86% reckoned that Immigration had changed the rules and not told anyone.
• 14% suggested a new conspiracy theory that the Goat hadn't considered.

]}:-{>

Taxi? Duh, me

The single biggest obstacle to exporting my motor vehicles yesterday wasn’t the paperwork or the payment. It was transport. I had to get both the bike and the car up to Doha’s industrial area and then pick up a rental car and get to work.

As the container terminal opens at 7am, I set off early, arrived, and dumped the bike. Then I looked for transport back to town to collect my car. Obviously there are no taxis patrolling the grotty, potholed streets of the industrial area at 7:30. I walked a kilometre or so past rows of wrecked cars jostling with new and used excavators to the Jeep workshop, and phoned Karwa for an immediate taxi.

After spending 20 minutes being lied to by a recording about how my call was important, I was advised that: “No taxi available until 12:15.”

How useless is that? The only taxi firm in the country, and every car in the entire fleet is booked solid for nearly five hours. The joys of a monopoly service provider. No, I don’t believe it either.

Eventually, one of the myriad illegal, unmarked, private taxis stopped, and I got  rather expensive ride back to town, grabbed my car, and repeated the entire process.

Again, I waited outside the Jeep workshop. This time I was able to flag down an actual official Karwa taxi, with a meter and air conditioning  and everything. The driver confirmed that Karwa’s call centre was next to useless, and he was fed up with being berated by customers for being half an hour late when the call centre had only given him the pickup information two minutes previously.

In the ancient olden days, Doha’s taxi fleet consisted of millions of wobbly-wheeled orange-and-white cars, erratically piloted by Afghani shepherds. They were very cheap and, crucially, in plentiful supply. It was virtually impossible to walk anywhere in Doha without being tooted: obviously any pedestrian is in need of a ride. Qatar’s effort to make the place a little more upmarket resulted in all these mobile traffic offences being removed from the roads and replaced by a fleet of shiny new powder-blue Karwa taxis. The trouble is that the overall budget appears to have remained unchanged. Instead of millions of crappy cars, Doha now has a fleet of about nineteen shiny ones.

I have complained to Karwa about the inadequacy of the taxi fleet and the booking system whose effectiveness varies from erratic to non-existent. It’s basically a waste of oxygen, and the only benificiary is Qtel. The best answer I ever received was that more taxis were coming soon. Not that this would help my need for one tomorrow at some obscure hour of the morning. (So early, in fact, that the sparrows wouldn’t have even finished their sprout masala.)

I have basically given up on taxis. A pre-booked car has never, ever arrived on time. When I attempted to book an 6am trip to the airport I was told that no cars were available before 8am. When I tried to book 48 hours in advance I was told to call back tomorrow. I’m renting a car for my last month in Qatar in preference to attempting to use the dysfunctional abomination masquerading as a public transport system.

And last night when I emerged from City Centre Doha at around midnight I found what has been going wrong. All nineteen Karwa taxis were queued up outside, plus numerous private limousines. Ah, so this is where they all hide. No wonder I can seldom find a taxi at the other side of town.

]}:-{>

Uniform

I’m currently navigating the appallingly complex set of rules, procedures and opinions required to export my worldly goods to Dubai. There may be light at the end of that particular tunnel, even though it seems that the solution is to hurl massive sums of money at the problem.

Officialdom, eh? I wonder what it is that turns normal, well-adjusted citizens into misanthropic sociopaths the moment they don a uniform? I went shopping on Saturday. After the atrocious tragedy that was the Villagio fire, that particular shopping mall has been closed, and thus there is a massive shopping mall shortage in Doha. Consequently, up at Landmark the parking areas are full to overflowing and there are cars abandoned all around the mall on any piece of flattish ground that’s within a reasonable walking distance of air-conditioned comfort.

I turned up on my motorbike. Unsurprisingly, all the underground parking bays were occupied, and cars had been abandoned on raised hardstandings and double-parked in aisles. So I asked the uniformed security guard if I could park my bike just here, in an unoccupied corner next to the door. He was adamant that I could not, and dismissed me with an instruction to go and find a space.

I’m surely perfectly entitled to park my motorbike in a car space, of course, and if I’d turned up as the sole occupant of a car there’d be no fuss. But with such a busy car park, isn’t it to everybody’s advantage that I park my bike somewhere that can’t be used by a car? Notwithstanding the outrage of someone who can’t park his Hummer because the only available space is full of motorbike. Unfortunately, the legal position  is unclear. I have heard of tickets being issued to motorbikes “parked illegally in a car space”, and also to motorbikes parked in alleys and on footways because “they should have been parked in a marked space”. At a different mall I have been instructed to “park here” and “no not here; you must park over there” by the same security guard.

My guess is that the security guard has no power over folk who simply abandon their cars in the aisles, and therefore chooses to take out his frustration on the one mall customer who has the courtesy to ask him where he should park his bike.

A similar thing happened a couple of weeks ago over at the Pearl. A group of us bikers rolled into our usual parking area and were shooed away by Security, as this area had been designated for valet parking only. Never mind the cars that had been abandoned there. After we moved to an unoccupied area beneath an adjacent building, more Security arrived and told us that we couldn’t leave our bikes there either. The security guard suggested an alternative place to park but, when this turned out to be a bus stop with an enormous “No Parking” sign, we went back to our original parking area and the rather embarrassed security guard drove away.

In other news, my landlord has decided to be awkward. Obviously I have to vacate the premises, have an inspection done, and then get my security deposit returned. Let’s work backwards.

• I have to close my bank account before I leave the country.
• I need a bank account in order to pay in the security deposit cheque.
• It will take my landlord up to two weeks after final inspection before the cheque is issued.
• I have to vacate on or before the date of final inspection.

So where do I live? The Ramada? Bates Motel? Someone’s sofa? I’ve already paid rent up to 14^th July and I have to leave within a week of my residence permit being cancelled. Allowing a couple of days for the bank to handle cheque clearance and account closure, I will become homeless on 21^st June. I’m suspicious that my landlord is not satisfied with three weeks’ rent paid on an empty flat, but seeks to delay issuing the security deposit cheque until after I’ve demobilised and he can grab a further month’s-worth of free money. Maybe I should sell all the furniture from this fully-furnished flat and let him keep the deposit.

Further demobilising expenses involve the multiple-exit permit. This cost me QAR500 and is valid until August 2012. But I can’t have my residence permit cancelled until after the multi-exit is cancelled. And that now costs QAR500. I never signed up to a cancellation fee; this is a new thing dreamed up by da Gubmint a couple of months ago. It’s a ploy to discourage multiple-exit permits, so the reasoning behind punishing people who are trying to cancel is unclear. I can’t simply let it expire, as my residence permit has to be cancelled before that expires in July.

Ever get the feeling that you’re being ripped off at every turn?

]}:-{>

'tardy responses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wish me luck.

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

]}:-{>

Make it stop

It has finally come to this. I had a previous rant about work-related issues, and that supposedly should have got things out of my system. But alas, that was not to be.

My job stinks. Without going into details, because I operate a deliberate moratorium  on discussing work-related material, I’m so utterly fed up with it that I’m chucking it all in. I’m exhausted, completely burned out, and I lack the thick, waterproof skin necessary to shrug off all the grief. There are limits to the amount of work-related stress someone can handle, and I long ago passed that limit. Assuming I’m not already there, I’m heading for what used to be called a nervous breakdown.

Something must change. A new job is possible, whereas the jury’s still out on the possibility of a new life. So the job has to change. I can’t stay in Qatar, and even if I could I wouldn’t. The employer might change but the client wouldn’t, and that is another part of the problem. So here is where I raise my white flag and run away and hide.

It will be difficult, of course, not least in either shipping all my stuff back to Dubai or selling it in the early summer when half the population of Doha is leaving to escape the heat. And I have to deal with everything in the correct order so that I don’t lack the relevant piece of officialdom to do any particular task.

]}:-{>

Blossoms and bathtubs

Hanami is an important Japanese custom and is held all over Japan in spring. Hanami literally means ‘viewing flowers,’ but it generally indicates looking at and enjoying the cherry blossom.

Beloved Wife dictated the time for the recent trip to Japan around the requirements of academia, and was hugely delighted to learn that the hanami festival would probably occur when she and the Goat were present. As it turned out the first brave blossoms were blown away by some foul weather, but later in the week more appeared and it was possible to enjoy the very Japanese pastime of walking in the park, eating and drinking outdoors under the trees, and taking far too many photographs of small, pink flowers. The picnicking and photographs continued all week, and all over that little bit of Japan that Goat and his Beloved Wife had time to visit.

Picnics under the blossoms

Drums

Yoyogi Park was extremely well attended on the first Sunday. All the Tokyo locals plus many visitors seemed to have descended en masse and pitched their picnic spots beneath the largely blossomless trees. Eating and drinking aside, there were tightrope walkers, drummers, and even a Japanese bagpiper. He’d not worn appropriate unbifurcated garb, however, unlike the Goat.

Pipes

Port and Starboard

And speaking of garb, some cosplayers came out to dance under the trees in their outlandish outfits, and the rockabilly rebels entertained themselves and the onlookers to loud 1950s style music.

Cosplay and choreography

 D'ya wanna be in my gang?

Whilst denim, leather, and winkle-pickers might have been OK, the tattoos would almost certainly keep the rockers out of the public baths. There seems to be a blanket ‘no tats’ rule.



The rocker with the rather splendid dragon tattoo



Beloved Wife had arranged a couple of days in Kinosaki Onsen, a spa town on the north coast, but had found an entry in the Lonely Planet guide indicating a mixed-bathing facility in Tokyo, and within reasonable range of the metro. Figuring that her Goat had never done the hot public bath thing before, at least not in Japan, she opined that this would perhaps offer an opportunity to show him the ropes.

The place turned out to be up a long, steep hill. As the directions in the guide book weren’t very helpful, a series of “Sumimasen…Gomen nasai…erm…Onsen? Sento?” followed. By the time BW and Goat had found the place it was almost chucking-out time and they decided to return the following evening.

Having deposited shoes in lockers and been issued with towels and minuscule pyjamas to wear whilst not actually bathing, they headed upstairs to separate changing rooms. Japanese custom and practice is that the communal bathing is done naked. Also, the bather soaps up and rinses off in a sitting position before entering the bath. Dirt and soap are not allowed in a Japanese bath, which is maintained at around 42C or 108F. This is monkey temperature: you lower yourself into the hot water and fail to suppress shouts of “Oooh! Oooh! Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!” The whole environment is hot, steamy, and echoey.

The Goat headed to the outdoor male-only bath, and noted the sign that said to put on some Speedos before heading down the steps to the outdoor mixed bath. There he met Beloved Wife, and they spent an hour getting dishpan hands and looking up at the celestial canopy. Unfortunately the poolside bar was closed, but there was one of the ubiquitous vending machines available for anyone who’d brought some cash and not left it in his locker.

After turning into lobsters, BW and Goat headed back to their respective changing rooms, became dry as well as very clean, and were delighted to discover the complimentary minibus back to the metro station.

Kinosaki Onsen is a town several hours’ train ride away from Tokyo. As onsen refers to natural hot springs, as opposed to sento, which are simply public baths, it may be inferred that Kinosaki is devoted to bathing in volcanically-heated spring water. In a fit of good taste, Beloved Wife had booked a night in a traditional hotel: tatami mats; paper screen doors; sleeping on futons. 

The sitting room. And bedroom.

The hotel provided ID cards to prove that BW and Goat were bona fide customers, and these would allow free access to any of the onsen in town. It’s encouraged to walk the streets in yukata (dressing gown) and geta (wooden flipflops) on an onsen crawl. In addition to the bath houses, hot foot spas are dotted all around, wherein the water is sulphurous and unbelievably hot. A small café was selling eggs cooked in one of them. The Goat managed to scald himself to above his hocks. Owch, owch, owch!

Kinosaki by day

Several baths and lots of photographs of trees and lanterns later, it was time for food and booze. 

For goodness sake

Sitting inside a little bar with sake (rice wine, served hot) and edemame (peas, served salty), the sound outside was reminiscent perhaps of Victorian London. The constant clip-clopping of hooves on asphalt was of course geta, the wearers of which were heading between baths.

Between baths

As a private hour had been booked at the hotel’s own onsen for later that evening, Beloved Wife and Goat didn’t have to bathe separately all the time. But the combination of travel, hot baths, food and drink ensured a very deep night’s sleep.

Kinosaki by night

The Goat is convinced: a Japanese bath in the Cyprus dream home is now on the ‘must have’ list.

]}:-{>

Rio? Ja!

The campsite

Here, as promised back in November, is the ‘warts-and-all’ update about Rio after half a year.

Beloved Wife made positive, albeit feminine, remarks along the lines of “Cute,” and expressed further unkind opinions involving hairdressers. But she had to acknowledge the efficacy with which Rio provided sufficient shoulder and elbow room, and carried three adults and their luggage. Rio is also easy to park, being only 4.1m long and with a 10m turning circle. Such a shame that after six months, she’s already showing wear and tear courtesy of inconsiderate sods who open their adjacent car doors with reckless abandon.

Rio, in bright red, looks not entirely unlike one of the Lekhwiya (Internal Security) cars that somehow shrank in the wash.

Around town, the automatic gearbox is prone to getting confused as it hunts for a suitable gear. Over the first thousand kilometres, while the Goat was under strict instructions not to exceed 4000rpm, this was less of an issue as he was being very gentle. Now that running her in is over and the first service has been completed, a less gentle right hoof has the 1500cc engine spinning thrashily away from the traffic lights. The important thing to remember is that the engine should be fully warmed up before doing anything stressful. This is the same advice given to motorcyclists, and with chain-driven DOHC and sixteen bucket-and-shim valves, the Terios engine is very like one from a Japanese motorcycle. Basically, warm it up first, don’t over-rev it, use decent oil and change it regularly, and the motor should be pretty much indestructible. The rather short gearing makes cruising at over 120km/h a rather noisy process, but not so that listening to the in-car entertainment or conversation actually becomes difficult. Especially at speed, the cabin is nowhere near as quiet as a BMW 528, but what is?

Around town, Rio can be a lot of fun. What is lost in outright performance is won back in roadholding. Full-time 4WD helps her to stick to the corners, even on rare wet occasions. The suspension is rather stiff and bouncy, especially when there’s no luggage on board, so bumpy corners can be a little bit interesting with Rio’s rather basic solid axle and Panhard rod rear suspension. One problem is that Rio stood in the showroom for over two years before purchase, and all four road tyres have developed flat spots that cause a vibration at 100km/h. Wheel balancing didn’t solve the problem, and when each wheel was on the balancing machine the wobbly tyres were obvious. If these don’t sort themselves out by the 5000km service, the Goat will be aiming for replacement tyres under warranty.

Fuel consumption is rather disappointing. Within Doha, the Goat generally achieves around 11 litres/100km (25 miles per imperial gallon). Extended stops at red traffic lights followed by harsh acceleration are largely responsible. On the open road, rather better 8 litres/100km (35mpg) is realistically achievable. Not that the Goat really gives a stuff about the cost of motor fuel. It’s 85 dirhams a litre; equivalent to UK 15p/litre or $0.88 per US gallon. Fuel consumption is only of interest when considering the tank range of between 450km and 625km.

The Goat reckons that the air conditioning could be better. Plenty of cold air gets squirted into the cabin, but it takes a while for the interior to cool after being parked in the sun for several hours. The black upholstery probably doesn’t help to keep the temperature down. But it does help to show the dirt.

There’s a reasonable number of whistles and bells to entertain the driver. The basic radio and CD player will only do one CD at a time, and there’s no short wave band and no cassette player. A useful socket provides a convenient place to jack in the iPod. Twin trip meters and clock, plus fuel computer and outside temperature are all available in the instrument panel. Unfortunately there’s no temperature gauge; just a blue light when the engine is cold and a red one if it overheats. Electric windows, central locking and keyless entry all come as standard, as does a pathetic, weight-saving 35dB mouse-fart horn. There’s fag-lighter socket in the front and another just inside the tailgate to power camping accessories. Maximum 120W, according to the owner’s handbook.

Desert Terios

Now on to the subject of camping, and the Goat went down to the Inland Sea last weekend. Rio performed very much as advertised, dancing on the sand despite being full of camping gear. The central differential is locked by punching a button on the dashboard, and a fair amount of revving is necessary to release all 105 ponies. She even successfully scaled a couple of steep dunes without fuss, where a younger and less experienced Goat sometimes used to have trouble in his old Galloper, Cherokee, and occasionally Patrol. The Goat suspects that this is the experience of years showing, rather than a Terios being the best dune car in this list. As the Goat actually arrived at the campsite after dark, he’s pleased to note that the headlights are excellent.

With both sides of the asymmetrical rear seat folded, the load bed looks cavernous. It’s significantly larger in all three dimensions than a Jeep Wrangler’s with the back seat removed.  Of course, the load area isn’t a patch on those in bigger 4x4s, but there was room for all the Goat’s camping gear and provisions and plenty of space left over.

Where the Terios falls down is in build quality. Everything fits, and everything works, but it all feels thin, plasticky, and apt to break if it’s Goathandled roughly. So “Gently, gently” is the motto. Gently with the interior fittings, and the Goat must remind himself that this tiny car, notwithstanding its delusions, is not a Land Cruiser.

]}:-{>