Selling a car

First of all, let it be known that website information is not what it is cracked up to be. Abu Dhabi police have a helpful website with information about documents needed to buy, sell and register a car. Unfortunately it is not accurate! We decided to buy a second hand 4WD the other day. We’ve been looking for a while and I noticed that when I found one that seemed interesting it was often sold before I got to contact the owner. So when I finally found one that my spouse and I agreed upon we committed to it quickly. Actually at this writing we have not completed that transaction, but this is not the story of that purchase but instead the sale of our 3 year old small sedan car. Having decided to buy a car, we needed to sell the sedan to help pay for the 4WD. I looked up the website to find out what is needed to buy and sell a car. I was soon to discover just how fast the car market is here in Abu Dhabi.

Since we were going to get this other car we needed to get rid of the sedan. So at 6pm on a Tuesday evening, two hours after deciding to buy the 4WD, while waiting for one of my daughters to finish a dance class, I logged into Dubizzle.com, created an account and created an ad from memory.  When I got home an hour later I got a call from a prospective buyer asking me about the car. I walked out to the sedan to check the odometer because I hadn’t known the exact reading (my spouse drives it) and found it was 6,000 more than I’d put on the website. . He wasn’t particularly concerned but wanted to know what my “last price” was. I said that as the car had been on the market for less than an hour I wasn’t going to negotiate just yet!  I went back on the website, corrected the mileage and uploaded two photos of the car. One a standard long shot that was actually a little old but still quite representative of the model and colour. The second was a close up of a self inflicted scrape on the rear fender where I had inadvertently backed into the edge of a wall. During the remaining part of the evening I received a number of calls and texts. I had offers made that were 3~5000 less than the listed price and a couple of people who seemed genuinely interested in coming to see the car the next day. I turned the phone off at 11pm to put an end to the evening.  As far as I was concerned I wasn’t interested in offers from people who hadn’t even seen the car and certainly not with a chance to test the market at my stated price. My ad said to text during the day and call during the evenings.  I got a couple of texts during the next morning, and few calls that I couldn’t take, and a couple that I did. I had people calling from Sharjah, and Dubai which I thought was a little odd since it would be a long journey for them to come and survey the car from there and the Dubai market seemed much more dynamic. My earliest opportunity to show the car was at 4pm so I offered that time to some of the texters. When I returned home from work I picked up the car and drove around the corner to my nearby easy meeting point and found my interested party already there. He walked around the car and talked to me a bit and wanted to know my "last price". I said it was still very early days but I’d consider dropping by about a 1,000 since it was due for a 50k service. He said he wanted it. I practically forced him to take it for a test drive around the block first. He said he trusted me because I have been up front and posted the pictures of the damage, and he felt that this meant I’d be honest about other problems if there were any. Actually he is correct but I wouldn’t suggest anyone to rely on that logic too much in this market!  Result, a commitment to buy less than 24hours since I’d placed the ad online. I took the ad offline at 5pm.
 Next came the difficult part. My schedule is pretty tight and we soon discovered that there was no mutually possible time to do the ownership the next day, which was his only day off. That left doing it the same day. He would go home and get the cash, I would take a different progeny to a music lesson and we would meet up again at 7pm to do the deed. I warned him that according to the website he would need his passport, and perhaps employment certificate and that he would have to arrange insurance at the time. The car registration was only 4 months old so a new vehicle test would not be needed according to the website. At 7pm we began the process. First getting the insurance.  None of the companies who have offices on site were particularly known to us but he chose one and accepted their quote. They took his money and wrote up the paperwork. Into the main hall, we found the line for collecting queue tickets was rather large as the ticket issuer was on a break... Once we got that and eventually our turn came to register the transaction we discovered that the car actually did need to be retested. No amount of pointing to the website page which I had printed out would counteract that her computer said to do it again. So, we had to pay more money (120aed), and line up outside for the car to go through an inspection (exhaust, brakes, lights and undercarriage). It was getting quite late by this time so the line to do that was mercifully short. Then back inside again, pick up the new certificate and back into line for processing. Now the car had been bought under hire purchase (or mortgage as they like to refer to it here) and I was appropriately armed with the certificate of clearance from the bank to say it was paid off. At the time that I had received the document I had been annoyed that it had cost a large amount to have it couriered to me but I was glad to have it now. However, I was shocked to be asked to pay 200aed to have the document accepted by the system to register the release of the mortgage. More gouging was my inner thought! Still it was done, a text arrived instantaneously on my phone to say the car was no longer mine. Outside, in the car, he offered to drop me back home, but made me drive! 9pm I was back at my house minus one car.
Next task was to de-register the Salk tag, and get a refund on the insurance. I had removed the Salik tag from the windscreen and I phoned the call centre to get them to deal with it. However, they told me I had to email them all the details because I was from Abu Dhabi! Two days later I got a text to confirm the de-registration was complete.  At the time of the change of ownership I was given an insurance release certificate so that I could get my remaining insurance refunded. Actually that will end up being credited to our next policy as we want to stay with them to ensure easy receipt of the no claims  status.

In the end the documents required were

• Seller’s drivers license
• Buyer’s drivers license
• Car registration certificate
• Fresh vehicle certificate
• Buyer’s vehicle insurance policy
• & Mortgage clearance certificate if been on hire-purchase

Documents that were suggested as necessary but not actually needed were

• Employment certificate
• Passport

In the past a No Objection certificate has also been required but that seems to have faded completely.
Now, all of that happened quickly but purchase of the new car is taking longer. But that is another story entirely :-)

Buying a second hand car

Okay, we've started to look around for a desert car, something that we can take out on the sand and not worry too much about.  Taking your nice new car into that environment is really quite a risky business financially. Not just the wear and tear, but also the inevitable prangs.  Now when you start to look at the second hand market you are immediately aware of some of the pitfalls. One is the clock fiddlers who alter the odometer to give you a false sense of how much use the vehicle has had.  The other is the nature and number of accidents that it might have had.  There is a website that can help you with the latter. It is a service by the Abu Dhabi Police and it lists the accident history that they know about, based on the chassis number. You can easily find the chassis number on the car registration card, and pop it into the website  http://www.adpolice.gov.ae/trfesvc/EN/accidentinfo.aspx (do it from your mobile phone while checking out the car) and you get the type of collision, date, the location (in Arabic), and the model of the vehicle. I've modified the attached image for privacy reasons, as it shows a real event, which if you have read previous post you will know the origins of!!! But it is nice to know you can verify the Abu Dhabi history at least. Of course if it got knocked up elsewhere, you'd still be in the dark (I imagine).

Renewing your Emirates ID card.

 A useless piece of plastic so far but a big full page advertisement in the paper announcing fees for late renewal prompted me to begin the process. My card expired last month and with the proposed 20aed per day fees (to max 1,000) it made me think twice. Now the date from which they will begin charging varies depending on the Emirate and Abu Dhabi is down quite late on that list, however, there are some conflicting bits of information about that on the page where it suggests that charges can be calculated from November 1, although they will only be applied (asked for?)  in April 2012. Better be safe than sorry.

Turns out the process is quite easy and relatively quick. But of course there is a hook.  You need your old card, and your passport with your new visa. It is 100aed per year of visa, so if you have a  3 year visa it will be 300aed. Says in the paper that the maximum fee that typing centres can charge is 30aed. So I walked in to my local typing centre with 330aed.  Actually there is a set of 5 typing centres side by side and they fought over my business, but I semi-randomly walked into the middle one which had been the first to beckon me as I wandered nearby.  I confirmed that they could do the ID cards and was ushered to a seat. There I sat for about 10 minutes. The clerk flipped back and forth through the pages of my passport and meticulously copied details from my card. Then to my surprise he stuck a hole punch through the card in two places, destroying the embedded chip. Kind of sad really since it was a virgin chip, and will now never know the joy of electronic connectivity ;-)

He then went over the details he had typed in and together we checked number for number all the digits and words.  Finally he printed out a receipt and submission confirmation form and charged me 370aed. Hold on, where did the extra 40aed come from. Govt charges he said. But, but, but. No, no buts. Just pay up. Back home I called the number on the newspaper article which said to call if you got charged more than 30aed. Yes that’s right 70aed, 40 for the typing and 30 for delivery. Hang on, it says 30 for typing in the paper, nothing about delivery and anyway I have to pick it up from the post office. It’s not being delivered at all. No, no, the 30aed rate is the new rate that comes into effect later. It hasn’t been finalised yet. Then why is it published in the paper? Anyway it says on my receipt 30 for typing, why are you, the official agency telling different figures? …

We all know the answer to that, because nothing is actually ever straightforward. There always has to be thorn on the bush.

BTW, the paper advises strongly that you do not leave your passport with the typing centre, so if they can’t do it straight away, walk out and go to another one that will.

To what Degree are you qualified?

There is a curious thing going on in the academic world. It could spread like a cancer into other realms. It is called ‘equivalency’. There seems to be a problem with the credibility of some peoples’ academic records and doubt about the validity of some degrees. Therefore degrees which have been through onerous attestation procedures are now being called in for scrutiny by the Ministry of Higher Education where they are judged as to whether they are equivalent to UAE standards. This may seem like a joke but it has deadly serious consequences. The idea that we verify that the degree is a real degree and actually worth the paper it is written on is of course a good idea. Attestation, after all, only says that the copy is a real copy of the original document, it doesn’t actually validate the document at all.

The problem here is the process of determining the equivalency has been extended to a ludicrous extent. Not only does the original certificate and an attested degree have to be supplied, but also the transcript of that degree (also attested) and all the preceding certificates right down to, get this, your high school cert. Yes, you need to find your original high school leaving certificate,  and submit it together with your other degrees all the way up to your PhD! But wait there is more, you need passport copies of entry and exit stamps showing you were in said country when you did the study, and you need copies of your Abstract, and CV. Woe betide you if you did a degree in a different language because you will need the transcript and degree translated into English or Arabic. There are a set of countries that are privileged to be exempt from a further requirement to have a letter from the embassy to verify the interaction between you and the universities issuing your degrees, and asserting that the institutions are credible. Of course you pay for all of this and if you don’t have all the documents you will be refused equivalency, which could cost you your job! So far everyone I know that has visited the Ministry to seek clarification has come back with a slightly different story… That doesn't bode well.

Unfortunately there are more issues, according to the Ministry, online and distance and even part time courses may not be recognised here in the UAE for equivalency, so your highest degree may no longer be accepted by your institution which could have ramifications for your salary!  If you are one of many who are studying for a PhD while working here in the UAE, the chances are it is with a university that is based overseas. Better check carefully because that may well mean that the course of study is not recognized for equivalency by the Ministry unless you spend a certain number of hours physically in the country of the host university engaged in running the courses! 

Now so far, I only see this happening in certain academic institutions, but it could easily become a more widespread requirement just as the farce of attestation has.

You can find details of the procedures for ‘equivalency’ here and the main website is https://www.mohesr.gov.ae/en/  The details and requirements are spread over a number of areas in the site and are typically inscrutable.  Good luck. My journey down this tortuous path has not yet begun as in an act of pure bureaucratic brilliance, my HR department has lost all my attested documents so I have to go right back to the beginning. It will be a while before I finally get myself to the stage of being able to even consider the Ministry, however, I'm not sure there is much point since there is no way I can find my high school certificates from a few decades back into last century... and I'm sorry guy but I just don't have my old passports either.

Bus Routes in Abu Dhabi

Just found this useful interactive showing the local and regional bus routes in Abu Dhabi. You can download a PDF version as well.
New maps at http://www.dot.abudhabi.ae/en/info/Bus_Maps (Sept 2013)

Getting your car out of the pound in Abu Dhabi.

Okay so not so many of you are going to need this, well hopefully. But since my escapade I have talked to a number of people who have had interesting accidents here in the UAE. Including passport confiscation for hitting a camel!

Anyway if you have the unfortunate circumstance of having your car impounded in Abu Dhabi, here is a little advice and directions.

The Abu Dhabi police have contracted Al Sahraa towing to take cars to the pound in BaniYas. Although my car was impounded in Abu Dhabi city it was subsequently transported to BaniYas (at my cost).  When you are ready to collect your car, after whatever arbitrary or court decided period, you can’t just go and get it.  My insurance company said I had the documents I needed (proof of fine payment etc.,) but when I eventually found the place I, along with a stream of others, was turned away and made to go back to a major police station (Mussafah would do, but I opted to go back to Moroor) to get a clearance form.

The clearance form is available in the traffic court building, nominally at counter 15. However, counter 15 is impossible to find (of course). In the fines and violations hall there are only 14 counters and you are pointed off down a corridor which eventually circumnavigates the building and brings you back to where you started. The best way to find it is to enter the building at the main impressive glass entrance. Look for a staircase on your left leading up to the Traffic Court. Instead of ascending, go down a few short steps in the staircase beside it which leads towards the body of the building. You quickly come to a T. To the right is a short corridor with a kind of reception desk which may be staffed and beyond the main corridor that circumnavigates the building. But we are not going that way instead you turn left at the bottom of the aforementioned short stairs and you are again immediately at another T. Here left would take you to some cleaning or other kind of room, so right is the way this time. The corridor is short and soon has a branch to the left which is to a door to the outside (more on that door later), directly opposite this exit is an open door into an office with about 4 desks and an annex room off the left. This room is counter 15. There seemed to be a lot of people sitting around, some in uniform, some in national dress and some in suits, all of them worked there. One guy in a suit spoke English and passed on my request for the release form. It was quickly looked up on the computer to verify that sufficient time had passed, then a page printed, rubberstamped and countersigned by the annex superior. Five minutes and I was out of there. (But I had found this room on a previous visit and it had taken me 30 mins and a number of circumnavigations to get there so be on your guard.) Remember counter 15 is a room, and it is not labelled or marked.  I took the exit directly in front of the room and as I exited the door looked back to see if it had any identifying features to help find it again. Unfortunately the only name on the door was “prison” so I doubt I would convince many people to take that shortcut.

Okay, back on the road to the BaniYas Vehicle Pound.  Now I tried to do my homework about where this place was before I ventured out there. Not much luck. Nobody could tell me an address. The best I got was that it was in BaniYas, go around 3 round-abouts, turn right and it is opposite YasMart.  Now if you know BaniYas you would probably know YasMart, but for me and the people I asked it was a mystery. Through a combination of Googling and Google Earth, I was able to put the roundabouts together on a map and locate a visual image of what looked like a vehicle graveyard. So I had a location, sort of. I had phoned the Al Sahraa tow agent there but he didn’t speak any English and couldn’t tell me the location. The head office did speak English but told me to call the first guy for directions. I explained that didn’t work and that was when I got the roundabouts explanation.

I found YasMart and did my u-turn to end up in front of what looked like the pound. There were lots of tow trucks parked outside, a mosque and an office for the Abu Dhabi Environment office or something (that was clearly not the towing business). I called the office again and the best explanation I got was to go around the mosque and I would find it. There are two little entrances past the mosque which lead into a weird compound of small business sheds all numbered, very decrepit and largely shut up.  To cut a long story short, as I did drive up and down the road a couple of times, let me explain. The buildings and entrances that you see opposite YasMart is not the pound you want. You have to go past that complex and turn right down a dirt/sand road that runs down the side of it until you are nearly at the back. There you will see a locked yellow iron gate. Park up there (off the side) and enter through the people hole. You will see a couple of very old Plywood box offices with 3 doors. The first houses the workers who will eventually find your car for you. The second should have a lone police officer who will send you away if you haven’t got the clearance form. If you have got it he will sign it then send you into the third door where you will meet the Al Sahraa towing agent who will get you your car. You will have to settle up the towing fees (Cash only – 180 for towing from Abu Dhabi, 140 for Mussafah, best to have spare and small notes in case there is no change!) They will then get one of the workers to retrieve the keys from the office that houses the police officer and get your car for you.  In my case since I had to now get it to the garage to be repaired I also had to pay to have it towed to the dealership. Make sure you get your receipts if you are on insurance as you may be able to claim that (pound to dealer) as rescue.

Copy and paste this address into Google Earth to locate. 24°17'19.64"N  54°40'1.31"E

Accidents & Traffic Court

I was recently involved in an accident and have to shoulder the blame for it. I am not going to go into the traffic details here, what I want to comment on is the process subsequent to that accident because it has some lessons that should be shared.

• My passport was confiscated – this was two days before my vacation travel was to start and I had to cancel my flights
• If I hadn't been able to get my wife to deliver my passport from home to the police station, I would have remained at the police station!
• It was difficult finding a timeline of when and how things would progress

The accident was at an intersection and was considered moderate~serious. As such the serious accidents’ unit arrived and took over from the Red and White patrol units. Then, as my car was drivable they told me to drive to the police station. I didn’t know where it was so had to follow a patrol car.  At the police station they impounded the car for a mandatory 15 days. There was a long period at the police station while they wrangled with the computer trying to write the report. It took at least four people in succession to get it done.  It was determined that the case would require a court appearance and therefore I needed to give them my passport. I offered a passport copy which I always carry, but it needed to be my original. I asked if my Second passport (I have two) would be okay, but again no, it had to be the one with my visa in it as it was designed to stop me from leaving the country. And leaving is precisely what I wanted to do, to go on vacation with my family. But the system is set to stop people from escaping justice so the vacation was immediately in jeopardy.

I called my wife and she delivered my passport. At that point they printed me a receipt for the passport, and explained to me that if I wished to leave the country on vacation I could substitute someone else’s passport. This is passport bail. However, since I was intending to be away for a month and all my friends were currently away anyway it was not really a realistic proposition.  Also there was no indication on when the case would be held. To add to the issue, Ramadan hours were about to start in a couple of days’ time which could alter the time taken. And it was unclear whether I would be required to be present in court. That is determined by the court.

I do not know exactly what would have happened if I hadn’t had my wife available to retrieve my passport. If you live alone, you might have to get someone to come and get a key from you and go and get it. I would like to find out if they would accompany someone to go and retrieve it… I would advise keeping your passport in an accessible place in your home so that you could give someone directions to retrieve it for you in an emergency.

I was free to go about 4 hours after the incident.  By that time I had received a txt message to say that my car was impounded. They returned my car registration and my driver’s license to me so that I was free to drive. The next day I got a local HR staff member to enquire if there were any alternatives to the passport deposit but that was negative. I was also unable to find out a timeline for when the court case might happen.  I was forced to cancel my flights, and we opted for my family to proceed on holiday without me.  Next I received a txt informing me that I had accumulated 8 Black Points from the accident, and urging me to drive safely.

After the week end I took my documents down to the insurance office only to find that the Arabic documents were not the ones needed and had to go back to the police to get a proper printout of the report. While there, I asked again about the timeline, and they pointed me to an adjacent building which housed the traffic court and told me to enquire there.  I got lost in that building a couple of times, and queued up in the wrong department twice but eventually found the registrar of the court who told me that the case was set for 3 weeks later. Then he helpfully mentioned that if that was not convenient that he could try to change it. I requested an earlier date and he got it changed to the beginning of the following week. However, he warned there could be a follow up appearance required. With the appropriate documents now I went back to the insurance office and gave them copies. Now they still need the final outcome from the court but they are able to open the file. Once the car is released from the pound they can get it delivered to the agency for repairs.   tbc...

Notes

• Keep your passport available, know where it is and how someone can retrieve it.
• Have air tickets you can change
• Look at cancellation provisions in travel insurance, particularly for events occurring prior to travel
• If you have a court case pending, go to the court to discuss the details with them pro-actively.

Fibre fibre on the wall, who is the most connected of all?

What can I say, today I finally got a fibre connection. It has taken 18months but today it happened. They came and finally connected the fibre up. You really don’t want to see the pictures of the cabling outside the house! I will post those as a separate video later. Anyway today I got my connection. Not at the speed I paid for, but hey, 8mb is a good start. Apparently the 16mb will come later when they switch me over fully… It took two weeks, which is probably pretty good since I have been trying for 18months. But there were some interesting fiascos in there. My cable looks good inside the house but when it gets outside it looks decidedly gnarly. Suffice to say it circumnavigates the house attaching to the walls in a precarious manner, then disappears across the neighbours property only to turn up in an alley, then descend into an open conduit in the sandy ground, all exposed to the elements and local fauna… I don’t think it will last the distance, but then will I? At least it is going! For the moment. Wish me luck.

Frustrating my-optic nerve...

Call me stupid. I went to Etisalat again.  I took down my 18 month old complaint to ask them to follow up on it (and try to get the outstanding amount taken off my account). But first I dropped in on sales to see what the status of fibre optic cable was. The last time I applied, some 6 months ago, I got told I could have fibre and they booked a technician to come. Unfortunately he went to Khalifa City A, instead of Abu Dhabi. And consequently my application got cancelled. They wouldn’t reinstate my application unless I visited in person, even though it was their mistake. The landline phone number the application was registered against was clearly in Abu Dhabi and different from my time in Khalifa. I love the way a phone company can’t handle business competently over the phone. 

Anyway since I was at the Etisalat HO I went to the surveyor and got him to check my location, and yes, it was still listing me with an incorrect address. He updated my record and assured me I could have fibre. He wrote various cryptic numbers on the bottom of an application form and sent me off to sales. At the sales desk I was told that there was no problem with getting the connection and he convinced me to go for a faster speed which would cost about the same as I was paying for DSL at the moment. So I signed up on Monday for a 16mb fibre optic connection wondering just how long it would take this time.  Next, I went upstairs to the customer service department to ask about my outstanding issue. There I was told that it was so old that they couldn’t look at it in the system but he took a photocopy of my complaint form and promised to pass it on to his supervisor in the morning. 6 dirham in parking fees (two hours premium) and I was on my way home with the promise of action on two fronts.

To my astonishment I was called at 4pm the next day to see if a technician could come to install my fibre connection that afternoon. I asked how long it would take and was told it would only take about an hour. I was very suspicious at that point as it seemed impossible to do everything in such a time but arranged for them to come at 5:30 and hastily arranged for my wife to take no.2 daughter down to her drum lesson (a taxi service I usually fulfil). The crew turned up pretty much on time (to my surprise) but did need quite a bit of phone coaching to find the actual house. When they arrived they spend about five minutes wandering around asking where the box was. To which I responded that they were here to put in the cable and the box. No, they replied they were just going to configure the “box”. I pointed out to them that someone needed to dig a trench and lay some fibre before they could do that and that they’d better get started. No, no that is a different crew. They would put in a report and another crew would come. If they hadn’t come in a couple of days I should call 101. And off they went. Useless.

Again to my surprise, the next day (Wednesday) I got a call to say that the next team was ready to come and could they do so at 3pm.  I checked that my wife would be home after picking up kids from school and agreed.  This next lot turned up and wanted to know from my wife where the ‘box’ was. She called me just as I was starting a class and I could only briefly relay to her that they were to install the box themselves, that was why they were there, to lay cable and install the fibre terminal.  Now apparently they spent a little time then went away and came back with another crew who told my wife that she could have the “box” today if she paid 1,100aed. She called me and I told her categorically that we did not have to pay. The technicians left without doing anything. My class finished at 5 and I drove straight to Etisalat. 3 aed premium parking. I got the same customer service agent that I’d talked with two days previously. I asked him first why I hadn’t been called back by his supervisor over that case. No answer to that. I then told him that we had been asked to pay for our installation. He was apologetic and said he’d heard of others being asked to pay 500 and that his supervisor had been able to sort it out. He said that they were independent contractors and he would get to the bottom of it and I would be called back by his supervisor – yeah right, like the last time I thought.

Thursday arrives and of course I don’t get called back by said supervisor, so I call 101. I relay the whole sad story and get a sympathetic hearing and a claim of shock that we had been asked for money. However, he said all I could do was wait for the technical team to now act on the installation. I pointed out that I was worried that now that I had not paid that I would get subjected to extra delays by the contractor. I also pointed out that in actual fact I have been waiting for 18 months for the fibre installation, as that was the source of my issue from originally moving into the location. Back then they had tried to cancel my DSL connection transfer because they were expecting to put in fibre but I insisted that I needed the DSL until the fibre actually arrived, and that since a DSL connection was already live in the house it should just be assigned to me.

So here we are again, time is marching on. So far I have had to be in contact with Etisalat everyday of this week. I have effectively wasted 2 hours per day dealing with them.  I think I might need to start charging them my daily rate plus transport and parking fees. Certainly this time around I am going to keep a closer note of the actual progress.

You know you’ve been in Abu Dhabi too long when:

• You use your hazard lights to indicate to other drivers that it is foggy
• You think that leaving trash in the park helps keep someone employed
• You think that getting hot water from the cold tap is saving you money on your heating bill
• You visit your home town on holiday and sit in the car waiting for someone to come and fill your petrol tank for you
• You receive a call and wait for the other person to talk before you say anything
• You can drive between two lanes of parked cars with less than 2cm to spare on either side
• You think rain is annoying because it makes your car dirty
• You call Etisalat for the fun of it
• You drive around roundabouts while on the phone and smoking at the same time
• You think the left lane is a “fast” lane on urban roads
• You think answering the phone in the cinema is okay
• You run across a six lane road within 50m of a pedestrian underpass
• You park parallel on an angle park and vice versa
• You have no qualms about driving over a 20cm curb to park on the footpath
• You start putting your phone number on the front dash of your car when you double park
• You don’t put your phone number on the front dash of your car when you double park
• As a non-Muslim you say Insha’Allah for the first time
• You swing across four lanes of traffic to take an exit that is only 50m ahead and you knew it was coming
• You start recognising women by their handbags
• You know that the car approaching from behind will undertake you on the right just because it is an FJ Cruiser
• You noticed that all the Hummers disappeared when they became a Chinese car
• You have received more baseball caps than you have room for
• Your Emirates ID card expires before anyone has ever asked for it
• You remember that they were going to get rid of gold and white taxis
• You shake hands with the same people more than twice a day
• You have 3 mobile phones and no landline
• You listen to the radio to see who else is suffering in the traffic
• You haven’t paid attention to a weather forecast for 3 months
• You choose the newspaper to subscribe to on the basis of the freebies offered
• You don’t notice wall tiles used as flooring anymore
• You naturally assume a fire escape will be deadlocked
• You think starting school at 7:30am is a good idea
• You think that a person picking up rubbish on a highway in the desert 20km from the nearest settlement is  unremarkable
• You don’t notice children lying in the back window of a moving car anymore ...
• You see an infant on a driver’s lap at 100kmph and don’t wonder who is steering (cause you know the kid is...)
• You think the Mawaqif is helping reduce the parking problems in Abu Dhabi
• Your tenancy agreement runs out without anyone noticing.
• You think 8,000 for a school trip is reasonable
• You start saying TGIT
• You know the meaning of PBUH without thinking
• You remember riding the bus for free
• You remember when there were no buses
• You know your way around Mussafah
• You pay off your car loan
• You don’t want to go to a particular country on holiday because it will be cold
• You forget what snow feels like
• You think skiing is an indoor sport
• You know why the snow zone in Marina Mall isn’t finished
• You have learned more Tagalog words than Arabic
• Your GPS shows you in the desert when you are on a 6 lane highway
• You decide that indicators are optional
• You think that 140kmph is slow for a motorway
• You eat breakfast at 9am
• You know where to buy a piece of wood
• You know where the National Theatre is
• You think nothing of making a U turn from the middle lane
• You feel nostalgic when you walk on carpet
• You forget how to wash your own car
• You check your traffic fines on line
• You think that recycling means putting rubbish in a bin
• Your running machine lies unused in the corner
• You can’t see your toes anymore
• You agree that unlimited use can be fairly limited