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.

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!

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.

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.