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!