This is the end

Hope you have enjoyed some of these posts. I have left Abu Dhabi for 'greener' pastures so will not be updating this site further. I'll leave it up for posterity...

Kayaking in the Mangroves

Skirting the eastern side of Abu Dhabi is a large set of mangroves which have always intrigued me.  If you are looking for something different to do in Abu Dhabi then a paddle through the mangroves is definitely something you could consider. We booked a tour with Noukhada (noukhada.ae) and were treated to nice morning's adventure. We hit low tide which perhaps isn't the best but was interesting in its own right as it really exposed all the mangrove roots and crab caves. However it did make the channels a little shallower. We could stand on the mud flats and see some distant flamingos, get up close and personal with some crabs and were treated to herons catching fish right next to the boats. Lots of tiny fish in the channels to watch. But the invitation to have swim in the green water was politely declined, nicely nutrient filled for the fish but not very inviting for the the two-legged. The two guides provide a good commentary and set a comfortable pace.

There are single and double kayaks available, and a 2-for-1 deal with the Entertainer if you have the voucher.

The Club

There is only one The Club, and it has been here in Abu Dhabi for longer than the UAE! However, now that there are lots of 'clubs' in hotels and leisure facilities it has been necessary to sometimes refer to it as the British Club in Mina. But really it is just The Club, www.the-club.com will get you there. It is a membership based facility but there are events and restaurants that can be accessed by non members. Compared to most other membership organisations in town, the fees are reasonable and it is especially recommended as family friendly.

Along with a great variety of sports facilities, the pools,  restaurants and bars, for me the most used feature is the library which has DVDs and books for borrowing plus there is always a good selection of second hand ones on sale too. Check out their website  a full description of the facilities.

Beginning the process of renewing your visa.

Collect the necessary documents

Medical

·         Photocopy of passport & visa page (+ copy of old passport if your visa is still in that one)
·         Medical Insurance card
·         Emirates ID card
·         (keep a copy of your passport with you while dealing with officials)
·         250aed (cash)

Emirates ID

·         JPG image of passport
·         JPG image of visa
·         JPG image of emirates ID front
·         JPG image of emirates ID back
·         340aed credit card

First up – get a medical certificate

Go and visit the Disease Prevention and Screening Centre building in Central Abu Dhabi, (Hazza Bin Zayed St – 11^th St).

It is best to go about 1pm or 1:30pm. Early morning is a chaos. If you go at 1pm as I did you will go straight through, no wait. I was the only one (man) being dealt with at 1pm on a Thursday afternoon!

Go to reception, and give them your passport & visa photocopy. They will staple various documents to it  and send you off with a wait token. I went straight to the empty counter. There they will fill out the forms and take your photo. They will ask you for the money so have the cash ready (you might be able to use a card?).  Keep the receipt because your company may reimburse you for it. Then they send you around the back for a chat with a doctor. Assuming you look healthy you’ll just be asked to take a blood test and chest x-ray. For both of those I was the only person there. It was like VIP service.

After the x-ray you will be left with a little card with a bar code on it and you will be ready the exit.

The hardest thing is dealing with the car park outside which is always crowded. If you venture around the back it becomes a tortuous maze.

If you want the status of your application you can go online to https://bpmweb.haad.ae/notifications/VisaStatus/Status.aspx where you will put in the application number from the little card and the UID number from your visa. Their website is pretty good so have a look at that. https://www.haad.ae/haad/tabid/1200/Default.aspx

The report should be ready to pick up in 48 hours. Go back to Seha and hand over your card.

Meanwhile you can go online to apply for your new Emirates ID card which you will need for the visa. You apply at www.emiratesid.ae but you are best to take this link to the application page http://www.id.gov.ae/en/services/e-services/online-form.aspx where you create a user account.

You will need jpg image copies of your passport and visa, plus image copies of your current ID card so get those ready in advance. Register for an account and you will get emailed a password. Log on. I advise you to change your password straight away with the link on the top left corner (Capital letter plus number, minimum 8 characters).

There are quite a few pages of information that you have to enter, most of which they already have and you just copy out of your passport and visa pages. Finally you get to upload your images and then they ask you for money. Costs 340aed for a three year renewal.  You will get a text message when you submit the paper work.  You get another text message to confirm that the application has been “validated”. Once you have that validation you go back onto the website and log in again. You can then print the document. Be careful with pop up blocking – I couldn’t get mine at first because the computer blocked the print function without informing me, so make sure you enable pop ups for that site. If you encounter trouble with getting it to print then just try a different browser.

You need the medical paper and the emirates ID application paper to proceed with getting the visa. At this point I hand my documents over to the company PRO and hope things go smoothly down at the Immigration office on Al Saada st (19th st).
UPDATE
My application got rejected twice as the Immigration office introduced a new requirement which was not listed on the form and caught my PRO by surprise. Apparently now they also need a new sponsor's letter together with the application. Once this was created and submitted it went through okay. The application is done electronically so all the documents get scanned and uploaded. Once approved, then passport goes into the office. Things just keep on changing... 

Insurance card games

Back to the ridiculous.- Tales of Bureaucracy Burdens.

Okay, our insurance cards ran out. I'm afraid that is normal for my company. The new ones finally turned up 5 days after expiry (better than the record 3 weeks). But my oldest daughter is now 18. So the company won’t pay for her anymore. Okay I knew that was coming but in the past they have let staff pay for the insurance themselves with the same coverage, that is they supply the card and employees pay for it instead. Not this year. Suddenly that is not policy. We have to arrange it ourselves. Would have been nice to know that before the cards ran out wouldn’t it? I mean that  is five days for which she has had no cover, not to mention the time it will now take to organise. Ah, but how to organise it.  Cut loose I am now beginning to see the bureaucratic monster arising. Talked to Daman, and they do offer individual coverage. First problem you have to go and apply in person, no online stuff. There is a basic Abu Dhabi policy but I was looking at a more comprehensive plan. However, when I talked to Daman I was told the basic plan could be purchased on the spot whereas the other plans involved applying for a quote which would be 3 working days. The weekend is approaching so I thought, well might just as well go for the cheap policy to get the quickest coverage. Then the caveats appeared. First she needs a certificate of “insurance continuity”, to show she has been previously covered. Her old card which has just expired and shows the dates of her coverage is not sufficient. Nor apparently is the national online database which HAAD has created. No, she has to have a letter from my company. Question – why didn’t my company prepare that document when they discontinued her coverage? Okay, so that will take some time. However, that is not all. To get the basic package she also has to have a certificate of non-employment. Pardon? She is still at school! You have to get it from the courts. How?  Well I was told by the helpful insurance agent that I could find out from the courts’ webpage. Gee thanks, if this is a requirement of the insurance companies you’d think they’d at least know the procedure.  On the courts' page I find that you need two witnesses plus daughter to front with ID cards etc., apply, wait, and probably pay...  Now the non basic plan doesn't need that certificate, so I wonder why I (& two others) would bother wasting a day at the courts to get such a useless document. Okay, so I still have to wait for a continuity certificate, and will have to wait for the application to be quoted.  Hope no accidents happen over the weekend.  I download the forms from Daman to get a headstart on filling them. Next confusion is whether my daughter is the policy holder or I am. She should be but since she is under my sponsorship she probably won’t be. That means I have to fill in the forms two different ways to cover both circumstances, not to worry they are only 5 pages long each.

Now I have to try to get to their office which is of course only open “bank” hours. However, my daughter is doing exams. So I will be taking the application in without her. Wonder how that will work? Well, if I am the policy holder why should she be there? If they need her she can come in when they give the quotation, it is after all only an application, not acceptance. Strange how little confidence I feel in that argument.  I see the days stretching out, and unforeseen paperwork popping up... tbc

Actually I had to delay over the weekend so took my daughter in on the Sunday. Looong wait to get attended to. Daughter as policy holder ended up being the option. But they still scanned my ID card as well. No firm date for return of quote, and a couple of days later we had to chase them up to find out if it had been issued. Could not find out over the phone. They insisted I had to go in to see the same agent, to which I said I had no idea if he would be working that day. They promised to email him to get in touch and gave me his landline number. I called repeatedly but never got through and never received a call back. However when I got home that evening I found out that he did call my daughter directly to say the quote was ready to pick up. She went in the next day to get it and pay. Cash only, no credit cards. Paid but still have to wait for a card, not even a temporary one issued! 

Fireworks

Fireworks have become a tradition now in the UAE and vast sums of money are being spent on a regular basis to entertain us in the sky. With little chance of rain cancellations the shows are becoming ever more impressive, as are the traffic jams caused by those attempting to get to see them. Unfortunately many people only every get to see them fleetingly from a car stuck on the way to the Corniche. One day I'll get down beneath them myself and watch the sky turn multi-coloured and listen to the thundering, up close and personal.
 

New names to confuse old timers

The move to re-label the city has begun with nice new street signs.

Unfortunately some of these names are not going to be so easy to work with and since the deployment of the new signposts, the old numbers are disappearing. Here is your current guide to the new names that I have discovered so far. This will need updating as the process proceeds. Where there is no new name listed it could be that the old one will continue, but I have yet to see a new sign to confirm it.  However, the familiar forms are likely to be under threat quite soon. It will be interesting to see how long the GPS maps take to update and also what changes we see with google maps, etc. Will they opt for multiple versions or will they just adopt the new names?

New name	No.	Old name	Familiar name	aka
Corniche	1	Corniche Road	The Corniche
Rashid Bin Saeed al Maktoum	2	Shaikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum	Airport Rd	Old Airport Road
Khalifa Bin Zayed St	3	Khalifa St	Khalifa St
Sultan Bin Zayed First St	4	Muroor	Muroor	New Airport Road
Hamdan Bin Zayed	5	Hamdan Bin Zayed	Hamdan
Fatima Bint Mubarak St	6	BaniYas Najda St	Najda
Zayed the First St	7	Zayed the First	Electra	Khalidiya St
Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan St	8	Al Salaam St	Salaam St	Eastern Ring road
Al Falah St	9	Al Falah	Passport Rd
	10	Al Firdous St	10th
Hazza Bin Zayed the 1st	11	Hazza Bin Zayed the 1st	Defense St
Delma St	13	Delma St	13th
	15	Mohamed Bin Khalifa St	15th
Shakhbout Bin Sultan St	19	Al Saada St	19th
Dihan St	21		21st
Salama Bint Butti St	23		23rd
	24	Al Karama St	Karama
Al Dhafra St	25		25th
Mubarak Bin Mohammed St	26	King Khalid Bin Abdul Aziz St	26th
Mawgab St	27		27th
	28	Khalifa Bin Shakbout st	28th
Rabdan St	29		29th
	30	Al Khaleeja al Arabi	Khalija al Arabi
Dhafeer St	31		31st
Al Bateen St	32		32nd

Important sites you should know.

Drinks - If you want to keep yourself legal when you imbibe in Abu Dhabi you should have a license. It is easier to get now than in the past and can be done online at www.auhsl.ae.   You can also apply through most liquor stores who will assist you, however the online site is straight forward once you collect your documentation. By the way you need that license even if you are drinking in a hotel, because as soon as you step outside to head home you become subject to the legal provisions. There is little concern here with the institution selling alcohol here - it is buyer beware!

Buses - The transport routes keep changing so you need to keep refering back to the source to get the latest routes and information. Go to dot.abudhabi.ae/en/info/Bus_Maps

Police - Just about anything can go through the 999 phone number but if you really have a none emergency traffic issue  the number to try is 02 4462462.

Parking - if you have someone blocking you in your garage or driveway then call the police with the plate number and they will contact the owner. This usually gets a pretty quick response. Other parking issues go through Mawaqif which you contact on 8003009   . their website http://mawaqif.ae/content/home?l=en lets you set up mobile parking where you can register your car with your mobile and pay for parking direct from your phone. This is convenient and also surprisingly reliable.

Power and Water problems go to 8002332 then option 2 for English. You can report outages in your area. ADDC also has a useful website at http://www.addc.ae/enindex.html

Finally for this potted round up www.abudhabi.ae is a good general site to launch you into other services.

In the land of diabetes

Recently we bought a dinner voucher at one of the hotels. It included a couple of courses and soft drinks. Well that is nice and it was a pretty good price. But the surprise was when we tried to order water instead of soda. Nope, no good, soft drinks means fizzy sugary things with unmentionable commercial affiliations. We would have to pay for water if we wanted to forgo the additives.

Strangely enough the bottle of water, when it arrived was made by one of the self same soda companies as well. And it wasn't as if they had an array of choices for us to turn down. Actually the only fizzy drink that I do bother with (besides beer) is tonic water. But of course their idea of soft drinks wasn't quite that diversified.  It is the same when you delve into the food courts and fast food joints. It is a rare institution that lets you swap their dedicated fries and soda for something less self-destructive. That coupled with lack of exercise, and the propensity to smorgasbord and you really can see why the UAE has a waist/waste problem. Please, please, please let’s put water into those meal deals.

Walking in Abu Dhabi.

The weather has become much nicer in the evenings. The obligatory walk with the dog is now a much more pleasant stroll. Now that we have relocated back into the centre of Abu Dhabi I find myself within walking distance of some shops. Rather than driving for miles I can walk to a nearby supermarket, and as long as I haven’t overloaded myself with purchases I can comfortable tote them home again. Interestingly as I walk home I pass by a little refurbished Baqala corner store.

 I see SUV’s pull up and honk the horn. Too lazy to even get out of their car! The attendant comes out and takes an order for chippies or soft drinks and retrieves the items for the driver. One day while I walked past and watched this reoccurring behaviour the passenger opened his window and dropped an empty can onto the street. The car was on the wrong side of the road so this wasn't the curb. Of course there was a rubbish bin beside the shop but that would have involved walking.

So while I am getting into the season and enjoying myself with the clement weather, I get to witness another class of people who have forgotten their civic responsibility and who have lost the ability to put one foot in front of the other. They can only move their feet from side to side to step on a pedal.

It is a shame because there is not that much of a chance to exercise in Abu Dhabi. We need to make opportunities. I work in a two story building with two slow and tired lifts. There are wide and welcoming stairs beside the lifts but very few people take the opportunity to stretch their legs. I relish the chance to get off my butt and get the blood circulating, and those stairs hardly count for anything, but the sheep crowd around the elevators and cram themselves in only to reach the next floor after me, no matter what direction we are going.

I like the new Baqala corner stores, the prices are on all goods now and the ability to actually be able to move amongst the shelves is convenient. The requirement to upgrade these groceries has been a good project. Since they are neighbourhood stores it just seems such a shame that more people don’t walk to them.

Chicken Little and the Ceiling has fallen down. aka Call the Cops.

.

What to do when your house starts to collapse. I have learned a lesson that hopefully you won’t need yourself. We lived in an old building very near to my children’s school so that they had the unusual experience of being able to walk to school (summer and winter) in Abu Dhabi. While the building was old we didn't really expect the structural problem that arose 3 years into our tenancy there. The ceiling collapsed in one bedroom. 

Fortunately nobody was under it at the time as it could have been serious or even fatal. At first the false ceiling sagged. This was a wooden frame ceiling, not the suspended ceiling tile type. We didn't realise, and couldn't see, that what was happening was that all of the concrete beneath the steel reinforcing of the concrete roof was falling off the ceiling and weighing down the false ceiling. Once the weight became great enough the whole lot just caved in. There had been an earthquake a week or so before in Iran, and the neighbours (adjoining wall) had been doing some renovations so either could have nudged the rotting concrete collapse to start. Who knows? Anyway down it came.

Now the lesson here is what you should do about it. As the lease is in my work’s name, I contacted them and the maintenance company that looks after the house. The maintenance company came promptly, took about a week to knock out all the remaining concrete under the bars, then proceeded to board it up again with another false ceiling! That was there fix, and they glibly told me that it happened all the time.  Now of course I wondered why that room had a false ceiling in it in the first place as not all rooms  upstairs did, so I automatically assumed that it meant that there had been a previous lesser issue which they had covered up. There were other rooms downstairs that had some false ceilings too, which immediately came under suspicion. We didn't feel safe with the repair (now only half thickness of roof) and with the suspicion about other rooms. In the end we got to move out to temporary accommodation and eventually to get a new house. The issue became the getting out of the existing lease, and getting a refund for the remainder of the lease.  The details of that are not worth mentioning here, but the significant factor is that it turns out that I “should have called the Civil Defence force” to show them the damage at the time. In other words instead of calling the maintenance company I needed to call the cops!

The pictures and everything else were irrelevant. I needed an official report. Just like a ding in your car, or a stone chip on your windscreen. And of course it was my fault because I didn't know to do it. The maintenance company, and the housing section of my work didn't know to do it, but I was expected to know! And getting it checked out months later when we are fighting over the refund is too late.

The lesson – if something goes wrong with your house, and you don’t want to be held responsible – call the cops. They will determine which service is needed. Get that official piece of paper that says someone has looked at it.

Fog

I love the fog in Abu Dhabi. It is so nice to see some variety in the weather. I love the way the traffic is largely more cautious. Strangely with the traffic going slower (at the speed limit) we actually get to destinations faster!

I have also been impressed by the way the number of people erroneously using hazard lights while driving has reduced markedly over the years. In a twenty minute drive in the morning rush hour along Airport road I only saw two cars using them. Looks like the message is actually getting through. I wish that was also so for the drivers with their trailers who seem to think hazard lights are useful when driving at 100kph+ along the highway and weaving in and out of lanes. Oh well, small steps. Anyway, for the moment I’m just happy to enjoy the fog.

Tunnel

Sheikh Zayed Tunnel (fka Salaam St. tunnel) is making me very happy. From the middle of the island I can get over to Mina (The Club) in half the time I used to take. The ride back is even quicker. Apart from one or two stressful merges, and unfinished roadworks the tunnel is a huge and welcome addition to Abu Dhabi. (Pictures from GN) It is not just the time, but also the tendency for traffic to stay in lanes without weaving (as much). Surprisingly, the speed limit seems to be being adhered to as well! :-)
Now we just have to wait for the GPS's to get back up to date!

Power Parking Bills

Nobody seems to believe me but I still can't get the power account

for my villa put into my name. It has been three years now and I still

have to pay for someone else!  You might think, "Why worry!"

Well, there are two issues that have made me get onto this again. 

I confess I gave up after the first 6 months and just phoned up ADDC on their helpful 800 number, punched in the account number, heard the amount due and paid over the phone with the credit card. The real estate agent and I had tried to deal with ADDC directly but there was nothing we could do.  (See earlier post Electrickery for details.) It had to be the owner who needed to go to ADDC in person to sort it out because the previous tenant had left the country without getting a clearance. 

Six months ago two things caught my attention. One, they started painting residents' parking marking on the curbing in the neighbourhood and Two an article appeared in the paper that landline phone and power bills were going to be needed for Visa renewal procedures. My visas were recently done so that is a few years off but I knew that power bills were also needed for Mawaqif parking permits. So I began the arduous task of initiating action on the power account together with getting the documentation  together that I would need to apply for a parking permit. I will talk about my tribulations with Mawaqif in a separate blog... Let's stick here to the power bill. So I had our housing officer call the company dealing with  the villa. Now this is a different company from the real estate agent who put me into the place. This 'company' is the signatory on the tenancy contract but they are not the owners! With much to'ing and fro'ing (read 5 months) it seems that the company now has clearance paperwork to submit. BUT still nothing has happened. Now we are at crisis point. Cars are beginning to be ticketed on my street. The lease is up for the villa and the housing officer has threatened not to renew if the landlord/company doesn't sort it out. We don't want to move, don't want to get expensive parking tickets and are stuck in the middle. The company claims they have to have an attested copy of a lease contract to change the power bill (another new feature) but does that mean the old one or the new one? The clock is ticking. 10 days until the lease expires, and parking wardens are roaming the streets. My solution is to write into the new contract that the company should cover any parking tickets I get until they sort out the issue. What chance do you think I have of swinging that one?

The really painful thing about all this is also that most likely if they do succeed in letting me get the account in my name so that I can apply for parking permit, it will probably involve them coming around and physically cutting off the power for a day or two, before coming back to switch it back on again for the "new" tenant... Won't that make it fun living in this house!

No longer financially attractive...

The idea that Abu Dhabi is a lucrative working environment has taken a few major body blows over the last few years. Housing of course went through the roof in 2008 and is now only just beginning to roll back to acceptable levels. Inflation has been a constant factor especially in the Education sector where school fees have risen at an approved rate of 5% per year annually. This has stretched family budgets considerably. Food and Petrol have crept up steadily.

But the biggest threat is coming from a Government Decree to freeze salaries, bonuses, and annual increments for public sector workers. Decree No. (2) for 2012 from the President of the Executive Council. In the matter of payroll, increments and Bonuses that applied in the governmental entities and the company’s owned entirely by the government. This is indicative of fundamental financial malaise infecting the economies of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. At a time when the UAE is earning more from oil than ever before it is still strapped for cash, such has been the effect the bailing out of local failures and the massive hit from investments decimated in the American and European financial crises.

It is not permissible to top up salaries with extra part-time work,even the local neighbourhood car wash labour force are regularly chased to stop their supplementary income (only official car wash companies are allowed to wash cars!).  Taxes are not far away. Apart from the 10% + 6% you get stung with in hotels and hotel restaurants, there are many other hidden taxes. Resident’s parking permits, liquor licenses, emirates’ ID cards, visa medical checks, visa renewals, and there is talk of a VAT in the not too distant future.  So what you've got now is all that it will be, and maybe less than what you thought... Can you live with it?