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.

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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.