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?

Burj Khalifa - well its part of Abu Dhabi now...

Obligatory side trip to Dubai to take visitors sightseeing. 

N.B. Untouched Cellphone pix

Photosynth of Sh. Zayed Mosque

Use your mouse wheel to zoom in... Was thinking of making one myself then checked and found it had been done already.

A knotty problem

As I was pulling into the company car park this morning a taxi was leaving from the other end coming towards me. They often use the car park for overnight parking and are mostly gone by the time I arrive. Anyway just after backing into a park, the taxi pulled up beside the car and the driver got out.  I confess I thought for a moment that I might be in for something until he brandished a nice new tie and said please!

He wanted me to tie his tie for him. 

So there I was at 7:30 in the morning in the middle of a car park tying up a tall taxi driver's new tie.

There is a first for everything I suppose. 

Noticing the unnoticeable...

I’m out of my depth here. But I have noticed a bit of a change in the abayas that I am surrounded by here. I know the intention of the abaya is to cover and provide for modesty. I appreciate that there  are both cultural (ethnic), family and religious factors working together in the UAE to have generated the clothing situation here.  The reasons women and girls wear abaya are many and varied.  What I have noticed though is that the cut of the abaya has changed over my last 4 years in Abu Dhabi. I deal with a lot of women in abayas. I see them in close proximity almost everyday. I also seem them in malls and other social environments. What I have seen is that the fashion abaya has made a significant inroad into everyday wear. Lace and brocade has flourished. Colours, especially gold and white have appeared both in trim and also in vast slashes of vibrant decoration. The form has become more generally tapered.  The abaya seems to be coming of age in terms of an outright fashion statement. It is no longer hiding clothing beneath or hiding physical shape. It is no longer an amorphous blob, or BMO (black moving object) as affectionately coined in KSA, instead it has become a catwalk creature. At a mall the other day I was conscious of noticing a mother and daughter in their respective abayas. One was certainly rather plain but nowhere near BMO status, the other was stunning. From mid shin to knee was see through black net lace revealing black ankle length tights. Similarly the arm bands hung transparently over a simple top. The result was a very attractive shapely garment that was a clear fashion statement – the abaya is no longer a bolt of cloth or a sack. I know I’m not supposed to look, but that is what catwalks are for ...