Speed Test - revised - and again

Revision MKII... I thought it was wise to keep this open. At last we have seen that the original idea of taking the official speedlimit to 140kph on the Abu Dhabi ~ Dubai was not an urban myth.  It has now been posted but with a caveat that apparently the buffer of +20 will not be valid. So apparently 141kph will trigger the radar. There is nothing like being consistent. So some radar will give you +20 on some roads and others won't.  Er, why don't we just say that a speed limit is a LIMIT and stick with that?  I have quite enjoyed the bizarre comments that have been posted online about this new speed and the 127 car pile up in the fog on the same road a couple of days before the limit was revised. The funniest usually revolve around criticizing people for driving at the speed limit in the left lane and therefore forcing cars to swing around them. There is no hope! People have an ingrained concept of there being a "fast" lane in which it is their "***"  right to go any speed they wish. That applies in town too, where the concept that the left lane could possibly be for those who intend to turn left, and move into before the actual intersection, is also clearly alien. No, No, the left lane is for me to do 100+ in a 60kph area to get to the next set of traffic lights quickly and then block traffic because I am in the wrong lane... You should not get into my lane and drive at the pathetic speed limit you slow poke driver...


This entry was originally posted in December following a news announcement in Gulf News that certain highway speed limits were going to be increased to 140kph. That has since been retracted. And highway speeds have been maintained at 120kph (+20) I will leave my original post intact beneath until I get further clarification. My sentiments about the radar grace from 120+20 remain the same.

I have kept away from writing about the roads. I would like to collect some video to illustrate what the roads are like because really it is not easy to describe. However, with the approach of the new year Abu Dhabi has announced new speed limits.  In an effort to reduce accidents and to regulate the flow of traffic better it had been announced that they were planning to make the speeds more consistent throughout the city and surrounding areas. Indeed in the short 14km distance that I drive to work the speed limit changes 5 times in the same straight stretch of road (2nd Street, aka Old Airport Road). It seems that stretch will now be consistently signposted as 60kph (but have an allowance of 20kph = effectively 80kph).

The highway from Al Raha over to Dubai is signposted as 120kph.  The new limit that has been announced for this road is a whopping 140kph!  However, the inevitable irrationality is immediately attached to this with the stated caveat that the radar will only kick in after a 20kph grace. This of course means that now everyone can drive at 160kph with impunity.
The problem with the roads here is not actually the speed as such, it is more the weaving in and out of traffic that takes place at these high speeds as some drivers seek to satisfy their "F1" envy. Now some drivers are not going to go over 140kph and indeed some cars are not going to succeed is driving safely, or even be able to go over 140kph, so you are going to have traffic running at 140kph but still being overtaken recklessly by those who will push to the edge of 160kph, not to mention those who believe the odd radar ticket is just an annoying form of tax and drive any speed they like. Indeed not paying speeding tickets is almost a national pastime.

The concept of a grace amount to compensate for variations of automobile speedometers is conscionable when it is about +5, any more than that and you'd be reasonably held liable for having an unfit vehicle as it cannot register its own speed accurately.

The other disturbing thing about a grace of 20kph on speeds, is that really it is just reinforcing the concept that stated laws are not actually worth anything at face value!  That the law may say this ..., but the practice is actually that ...

In conclusion, I believe we will see the following:

• a number of small cars breaking down from over "exhaustion" on the roads as they try to keep up (tires and engines are going to suffer)
• a greater fatality rate associated with accidents happening on the highways, as a result of many cars being driven beyond the limits of their safety specifications (most cars here have only the minimum airbag configurations and smaller cars were really only designed for 100kph conditions)
• more weaving drivers over and under-taking  across the lanes as they negotiate the vehicles that either can't or don't want to exceed 140kph
• greater intolerance of trucks which appear to be remaining restricted to 80kph and hugging the right exit entry merge lane (if you have to slow from 160 down to 80 to fit in between some trucks to get off at your exit, you're going to feel like you are at walking speed... and nobody walks around here!) so the ability to decrease speed and get into the appropriate lane prior to an exit is going to get even messier. (Seeing cars swing across 3 or 4 lanes to get to an exit is a regular, and heart stopping, sight.)
• not to mention the increased fuel consumption that results from these higher speeds on the roads
• can you imagine what the safe following distance would be specified for cars travelling at 160kph? I can tell you it is not the distance at which the car-behind-you's flashing headlights disappear from view because it is so close.

Will any of the stated objectives be satisfied. Traffic will still travel at varying speeds, cars will still weave in and out, and accidents will probably become more extreme. However, they won't have to make so many different kinds of speed signs any more.

24/7

Telephones, well at least landlines, are a bit of a dying technology here. Everyone has a mobile, usually two and sometimes more. There is a cultural thing going on with private vs sanctioned numbers that is not for me to investigate or comment on, but apparently there are about double the number of cellphones as there are people in UAE (source - rumour, I'll need to look that one up sometime). Anyway I have a landline for my mother to call because she is a Luddite and doesn't use a mobile let alone call one... I'd like to switch over to the new packages they offer with internet and phone integrated into fibre, which is about 1/2 the cost of my current combination, but despite my troubles almost a year ago with them planning to put me on cable and delaying my internet connection, fibre has still not been deployed! Didn't Etisalat say they had the whole of Abu Dhabi on fibre by the end on 2009!!!
Well two weeks ago my landline stopped working, actually it became intermittent, sometimes no dial tone, sometimes just a loud crackling noise and sometimes it would work. Which means it is basically useless. To register a fault you phone 101 and put in the landline number and wait. To find out the status of a fault you follow the same procedure but when you get to the end of the automated procedure you are told that the fault has already be logged for that number.  After a day or two you can do it again because they obviously think they have fixed it, but nobody tells you that. I soon got the hang of calling an operator number and bypassing this system to complain, basic tack being I want a refund for the lost days. Eventually I get a call from a technician to ask if I'm home so he can come to the house and fix it. No, I'm at work. When can I be home, around 4pm. Oh no we finish at 3pm. Well come in the morning around 7. Oh now we start at 7.  Well I start at 7 too and I work to 4, can I have your job? This is a telephone company that is supposed to provide service 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. You can't have the technical staff operating only when everyone is at work!  Anyway we negotiated that he would come on the Saturday. So I waited at home all day Saturday and of course they didn't turn up. I called and complained to 101. Hopeless. Two days later I get a call at 2:30pm can they come to the house to fix the phone. Why didn't you come of Saturday - no answer. I call my wife and find out she is home from picking up kids from school so yes they can come. I arrive home just after 4pm and there is an Etisalat van still there. 3 men are sweating around the cable entry into the house doing unspeakable things to the wires. They explain they have had to put in a new cable, can I check the phone now. Actually the phone is still not working so they go back to it.  15 minutes later, can I check the phone again, great it is working, but suspicious as I am, I ask is my internet still working - NO! Back to work boys.

Now at this point I walk out round the back to see the new cable which has been draped over the neighbour's fence and is running loose alone the side of the house. But just at the wall is a bird's nest of wires. This is their join. This is state of the art Abu Dhabi official Etisalat wiring. When I complained to them about the state of this they said it is copper wiring so "it's okay in the rain" but they did upgrade it to their weather proof version! Mind you they only taped up one cable, not the other cable they had also mutilated...
It took them another hour and half to work out which two wires where my internet ones that they had cut off. I eventually let them leave at 6:30pm (my revenge for them not working 24/7)
I have experienced nearly every level of Etisalat from complaints, accounts, applications, head office, branch office, telephone support, and technicians and I can honestly say I have not one good thing to say about the experience. Looking at the complaints' pages in the letters to the editor of Gulf News I can see my experiences are not isolated. This is one company that should shrivel up and self destruct.  BTW I still have an outstanding billing complaint that has not been dealt with after 11 months. Ahh, things work slowly around here.

Skylines

I have been fighting with Etisalat again, but that is another story and a different posting. But I do have a comment that relates in part to them. The Abu Dhabi skyline is particularly noticeable for some absences - for a start there are rarely any clouds, we got some of our first for the autumn season the other day and it was a welcome relief to the various monotones of grey to blue that we usually get. But just below that level there is one truly noteworthy absence. Powerlines (and telephone lines)! There are no power poles or telephone poles with unsightly cable hanging overhead. I've lived in Japan so I know all about visual pollution from utility companies. Here I am pleasantly surprised, and indeed delighted by their absence. Instead we find in parks and along the road little yellow blocks denoting the location of underground cables.  Now there are some  major transmission lines skirting the periphery of the city, you know the giant towers, but the local smaller versions are thankfully absent.  Nice one.

Electrickery

I want to pay for my electricity. I don’t want to be cut off. It’s almost summer, how could we survive with no electricity. Should be no problem, just front up and pay.

·         No, sorry we don’t want your money.  You don’t have an account.
·         Well I gave the real estate company the transfer documents and a deposit for 1,000 to have the account in my name.
·         There is no record of you in the system. Not under your name, your P.O. Box, your passport number or your phone number.
·         Okay, make an account.
·         We can’t transfer the account to you until the previous tenant gets a clearance certificate.
·         Umm, I don’t think they are in country anymore!
·         Well bring them into the office and get them to sign the account over to you.
·         Umm, I don’t think they are in country anymore!!
·         Then you need to get them to sign the paper and bring it to the head office.
·         Umm, I don’t think they are in country anymore!!!  I think I’d better talk to the real estate company.

Now six months ago when I moved into the house, the company took my documents and deposit, and arranged for a final reading of the meter, then they paid up the final amount. That was that, I thought. They had the deposit, I had my electricity, all go.  About a month later the electricians came around and replaced the old electricity meters with new Direct Connected Electronic ones. Fancy units that took a whole day to install.  I figured I’d get a bill sometime after that but nothing happened and nobody came to read the meter for ages. Finally some people came with some fancy electronic PDA that was meant to read the meter but it never seemed to work for them. And some other people came to look at the meter, I think to check up that a new one had actually been put in. Anyway the meter reader came again and I tried to ask when the bill was likely to come. Oh, soon, he said. No bill. This kept on going until I started to get alarmed. I hadn’t paid a bill since moving in. The meter man always seemed to be having difficulty with the readings, he cursed his machine a few times and eventually one time he wrote some numbers down on a borrowed piece of paper… better go and check with the Distribution company, I decided.  So I took a photo of the meter, to get all the various code numbers and the reading itself and headed into one of the branch offices at Marina Mall. Which is where the conversation above happened.  It did however, give me the account number that my meter was being charged to. That was to prove useful.

So next I emailed the real estate company. And it turns out they still had my deposit and hadn’t done the transfer of account because the person was out of the country.  But they had checked on line and I had about a 400drh bill to pay. They suggested I just pay that. Now that did not marry up with what my meter seemed to suggest, which by my calculation was four times the amount.  Anyway I thought I would just go ahead and pay that the next day. Well, the next day while I was at work I got a panicked call from my wife to say the electricity man was there to cut off the power… to the neighbour for not paying his bill. Was that co-incidence? Was he really not there to cut off ours? Why was he there two days after I had enquired at the electric company office? But I was assured over the phone in a relayed conversation that he was really cutting off the neighbours – see their meter is inside out house beside with ours.  Not trusting anything I hopped on the phone and got an electronic voice billing from the account number I had been given the other day. 309drh to pay. I took an early lunch and headed off, waited 10minutes in a line and paid that account off with just the number – no questions asked.  But is it really the right amount and why was it so little? When I got home I got another confusing story, apparently in the end the meter man couldn’t disconnect the neighbour’s power because of some configuration of the wiring – that doesn’t sound good. If he cut them off he’d cut us off too… so he left them on.  Armed with all the documents I could gather  I headed back to Marina Mall to try to get the account  transferred.  But no certy no accounty(excuse the crudeChinese laundry parody). Still no go. The English explanation wasn’t all that good but apparently all that could be done was to get the owner of the building to go down to the head office and verify that the person had left the country…

At home I was still not sure that my meter and the account aligned so I phoned the toll free number, waited a good twenty minutes on muzak hold, then finally talked to a pretty decent human.  Not that he could resolve the problem but we sorted a few things. Yes, the meter was definitely tied to that account I had just paid. And the last reading was in mid May and that was what I had just paid off.  No, there was nothing I could do about transferring the account, that had to be done by the real estate and the owner. But at least it seemed to indicate that my meter was not going to get the snip so there is time to sort this out.  I still don’t see how the numbers add up.  I still don’t see why they don’t just want to take anyone who wants to pay an account and take their money.

But I have learned all about the nature of final certificates. I’ll have to keep that in mind. See I haven’t had direct billing for my electricity up to now. In the past it has been within my contracts and I haven’t had such a thing as a final reading. I might live to regret trying to get the account in my name. I might never be able to get rid of it once I do! But the thought of trying to get the electricity fixed or reconnected if I don’t actually have an account is not pleasant, not while it is pushing 40+ daily now.

Mail

Mail is a funny thing here. You need a mail box to get mail, and it is actually the most consistent form of physical address you can maintain. Your house address is next to useless in pointing to your location, and you end up having to use landmarks and hastily drawn maps to try to show where you live, but that is another story.  Mail boxes can usually be shared with your employer, that is, you can use their mailbox to get all your mail routed through which can save you a penny and also mean you don't have to periodically cruise by a mailbox centre to find nothing there. Well the most likely thing to be there is a bill from somewhere that was due two weeks before it turned...
Still it is nice to receive mail, especially things from overseas. 
I had been searching for a DVD that for the past few years had eluded me. Eventually I tracked a copy down to a video store in Florida! Nobody else in the world offered it. I ordered and paid online. Never turned up. I complained but never heard from them. I periodically got emails about new releases and specials but strangely the body of the emails always showed in Chinese script. I emailed and told them to stop sending me rubbish and just send me the DVD. No response. Well, you know every so often you get a bad deal on the internet so I let it slide. I was only one DVD and not all that expensive.
Low and behold at the beginning of this week a parcel turned up (24th May). Delivered to my desk by the mail clerk. A DVD from the States. Sent First Class Airmail on 9/9/09. It has only been 8 months in the air! But who am I to complain, it turned up didn't it?

Now I'd better acknowledge the legitimacy of the Video store, while they send emails in Chinese, they do actually send the DVD's too. Maybe the DVD went via China?  BTW, I found out why they were the only store in the world that seemed to sell it. It has clearly been dubbed off a dodgy VHS tape...

 :-)

Hot and Cold

I know summer has started. It is not that the air conditioners have become relentless. There is another tell. The hot and cold taps have reversed.  Most Abu Dhabi homes have multiple, small electric hot water heaters in each of the bathrooms instead of a central hot water system.

And on the roof there is a very large water storage tank. As we move into the warmer months this outside water storage warms up with the air temperature. Then there is the added factor that many of those roof tanks only have a rudimentary open-sided canopy over them which only provides shade for a maximum of a couple of hours a day, if at all. Therefore, there is a good dose of solar heating that goes on together with the ambient temperature now climbing into the forties. So out of the cold tap comes water at around nice 40+c. Meanwhile the hot water tank sitting inside now no longer needs to be turned on, since there is a good supply from outside. However, since the hot water tank is sitting inside, in the shade and inside an air conditioned room, its temperature drops sufficiently to become the source of cooler (not cold) water.  So while the air conditioning electricity bill soars there is some small comfort in the knowledge that at least the electric hot water bill has plummeted. 

No end of problems

I had confirmation from the Etisalat sales representative in HO that my area was not subject to Fibre and that the existing, working DSL connection in my new house would be utilised. At the time I had enquired whether I should buy a wireless modem to cover me for delays since Etisalat is notorious for slow internet connectivity but I was advised that the connection would only take a couple of days.

It was obviously my mistake for believing anything that anyone at Etisalat says!

Without telling me, my connection transfer was cancelled because of a fibre plan. I only found out that it was cancelled when I complained about the delay. All that time the DSL circuit was working except I could not Logon to it. Ridiculously I was told I would have to go back to the office and reapply to try to get on the DSL! Eventually, a further week later after pestering the help desk twice a day I was given access to the account.  Well, it started letting the router log in anyway. But two weeks later it was cut off!  When I called technical support I had to wait two days for a technician to look at the job only to find out the that technician then went to Khalifa City A instead of Abu Dhabi. It took a further week of complaints to get it restarted. It was a problem with the wiring on the street although at first the technician tried to pass it off as a problem with the modem cable, which it patently wasn't.
 Returning from a trip between Xmas and  New Year I found the DSL was cut off yet again! I am not sure how long it had been off since we were away. Of course I was straight on the phone to customer support. I waited around the house for 2 days to let the technician inside. But nobody came. When I complained again  at the end of the mandatory two working days period, I was told the problem had been fixed and closed! No one had contacted me, no one had visited, and the DSL was still not working!  Then when I spoke to the customer service that afternoon I was told that the technicians only work until 3pm! How ridiculous! I called three times that afternoon, demanding to talk to the complaints department to complain about the customer service.

Eventually the next morning two technicians arrived, checked the modem and cable again, and then fixed a problem on the street. I would not let them leave until I could confirm that I have a working connection.

Next I tried to get compensation for all the downtime. Of course there has to be a hitch with that too... They only take such requests by fax - that old antiquated technology which of course I don't have! Email and phone are not acceptable. Of course I could visit head office - I was told helpfully. Grrrrrr.