What's This Dubai Lark All About, Then?

I could get very bitter and twisted in this post: if I do, please forgive me. I lived in Dubai for thirteen years before moving to Spain a couple of years ago. We knew, about eight years ago, that Dubai was committing financial suicide. Nary a month went by without some new and totally barmy mega-project being announced. The Emirate had opened itself up a bit so that foreigners could buy property there, but only in Government-approved developments - principally those being built by Nakheel (Government-owned), Emaar (semi-Govt) and Damac (private and quite probably bankrupt by now). Many of our friends bought houses on some of these developments: a few of them made shitloads of money by speculatively buying and selling. I dare say the rest of them are now sitting on a mountain of negative equity, and praying five times a day to the deity of their choice that they will still have a job in the morning.

There's no get-out, you see. The United Arab Emirates (of which Dubai is a constituent Emirate) doesn't have a proper bankruptcy procedure for individuals or companies. If you default on a loan, the only legal recourse for the lender is to have you thrown in jail until such time as you can pay what you owe. You think I'm joking, don't you? I wish I was - you can even be jailed for issuing a cheque that subsequently bounces (and the country is very much cheque-driven: if you rent a flat for a year, you either have to pay the whole year's rent upfront, or give them three or four post-dated cheques). I know many people whose only way out was to run.

The attitude of Dubai (and, let's be fair, the rest of the Arabian/Persian Gulf region) to non-fulfilment of financial obligations opens up the fascinating possibility of Dubai World being jailed in its entirety for planning to delay a massive bond repayment. Or, at least, you might think, its owners / top management / shareholders would be held responsible. These would mostly turn out to be members of Dubai's Ruling family, the Maktoums, with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the pinnacle of that posse.

I was intrigued / fascinated / pissed off throughout my years in the Middle East by the attitude of my paymasters towards putting money in my pocket. The direct employers that I worked for usually had a policy of keeping foreign workers a few months behind with their salaries so they wouldn't run away (I don't know if it ever occurred to them that if they treated their employees decently, they wouldn't want to run away). Running my own business, I rarely had problems getting paid by Western or Asian clients, but Arabs could be hard work and Government agencies were fucking impossible. In the end, I declined any approaches from the Government because I just couldn't afford to finance them.

And now, with a breathtaking display of utterly crap timing (close of business the day before a 10-day Government holiday), Dubai World announces it has no chance of paying the next installment of its bond repayments, and suggests its investors should wait six months. Yeah, right. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi will be picking off Dubai's prized assets for fire-sale prices, and there's still little possibility of Dubai being able to pay for any of the stupid stuff it has left.

Sheesh.

Kebab.

Happy New Year!

Well, this is weird. It's coming up to 11pm as I write this, and we've just come back from a wander around town that we started at about 8pm. The City Centre, around Puerta Del Sol is pretty busy. We even saw Police doing work: some were chasing illegal street vendors ('have you got a licence to sell this street?'), others were carrying steel barriers and putting them into place around the square.

But as we got further away from Sol, bars and shops were closing. We found one street in Barrio De Los Letras where some bars were open, and had a glass in three of them. And then we walked up Paseo del Prado and Paseo de Recoletas: these are broad streets with an equally broad walkway on one side, and they are normally full of people. This evening, they were deserted. Likewise, Plaza de Chueca. Every single bar was closed.

Here's the deal. In Spain, New Year's Eve is a serious family occasion. They'll be feasting until midnight, after which, bars and clubs will open up, and those who feel so inclined will party till dawn.

Meanwhile, in Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed (de facto Ruler) cancelled all New Year's celebrations yesterday, as a gesture of solidarity with the Gaza Strippers. I'm surprised at how little outcry there has been about this from my UAE blogging buddies. All it means is that every single hotel in Dubai will lose a shitload of money, and people who had tickets for these events will miss out on a great night, and probably not get their money back. And the good people of Gaza will be thinking 'well, I'm really glad they did that, it'll definitely stop those Israeli bastards from killing us, thank you Shiekh Mo.'

Five Things I Adore About Madrid

1) Sociability
The Spanish are very sociable people. I think they are trained this way in school, and I like it. Whenever you enter a lift, or a bar or restaurant, somebody will say 'Hola' or 'Buenas dias' or whatever is appropriate. When you leave, they'll say some variant of 'hasta luogo' (until later), unless they hate you or never expect to see you again, in which case they'll say 'adios'. I also like it when bar staff refer to me as 'caballero' - it just means 'gentleman', like the sign on the bogs, but it makes me feel good.

2) The Metro


Madrid's Metro system is extraordinarily good. And they keep on growing it. Recently-completed extensions make it the second-largest in Europe (the London Underground is 415 km long, Madrid is now 284 km with 282 stations, for less than half the population of London). Madrid's Metro is also the densest in the world - in the centre you are never more than 500 metres from a Metro station. I was on the platform at Gran Via the other day, and looking down the tunnel, I could see the next station (Sol). Amazing. And also very cheap: if you buy a 10-trip ticket, each trip is 6.7 centimos [correction: 67 centimos!].

The recent expansion cost a few billion Euros. But in terms of reducing car use and preserving the environment, it's a bargain.

3) Liveability


I love European (as opposed to British) town/city centres because they are designed and built for people to live in. In any European city, you will find that the centre comprises mostly apartment blocks of 5 or 6 storeys. The ground floor will be shops or bars or restaurants, and the upper floors will be apartments. It's a wonderful arrangement, and I believe it makes European city centres safer than those in Britain because people actually own (or rent) inner city space and are not going to stand for any shenanigans. I actually wrote my college thesis on this topic, so I know a bit about what I'm talking about.

And we are able to rent our tiny flat for 800 Euros a month: it overlooks Plaza de Chueca, a five-minute walk to Gran Via, ten minutes to Puerta del Sol. The equivalent in London might be Picadilly Circus: if there were actually any flats to rent there, what would you have to pay?

4) Reality
Possibly the wrong title for this section. What I mean is that your bus driver, your postman or your waiter will most likely be Spanish. In many of the restaurants that I frequent, the waiters are in their fifties, possibly more. They are doing the job that they have always done. What I have in my head here is that in England (say), you will never find a waitperson of that age. In Dubai (say) you will never find an Emirati working as a waiter. Never. It just doesn't happen.

5) Liberality
Having lived in the Middle East for thirteen years before coming here, I'm still coming to terms with the idea that people can do pretty much what they like, and it's not the end of the world.

People snog each other at bus stops. Nobody is forced to wear black clothes or white clothes according to their gender. You don't need to get a licence to be able to buy booze.

In Dubai, as a blogger, I always tried to hide my identity, and I always censored myself. Now I don't have to. But, oddly enough, I'm not finding a whole lot to criticise here in Spain. The bureaucracy is horrible, unhelpful and whatever, but I'm more relaxed about it than I was in the UAE. Probably because I feel like I belong here, and I don't have the threat of deportation hanging over my head the whole time.

When I left Dubai last summer, a few of my fans were expecting a massive diatribe about all the shit we endured while we were there. Well, there's certainly a book in there. But if I write it, it'll be for posthumous publication; there's nothing to be gained from slagging the place off. The UAE Community Blog is doing a pretty good job of that, anyway.

Panto-Oh-No!

For any non-Brits reading this, you might not be familiar with the peculiarly British tradition of Pantomime. Briefly, this is a form of comic theatre performed at Christmastime; alledgedly for children. It involves men pretending to be women, slapstick comedy, 'he's behind you' scenes, singing, dancing, kids being humiliated on stage and lots of other stuff. Typical stories are Cinderella, Treasure Island, Beauty and the Beast, Dick Whittington, Treasure Island and others. The scripts are normally butchered heavily to include local content and current affairs.

During our time in Dubai we have usually been involved in one way or another with the Pantos produced by Dubai Drama Group. I've been in one and helped design/construct/paint sets for many and operated sound for one; BetterArf has been in two or three and has written and directed one. Some years we were not involved, but we always made a point of going to see them.

There was one slightly tragic year. We were not involved at all but we had our tickets for the final performance (in those days DDG were able to sell out 11 performances, including 2 weekends with matinees on Thursday and Friday). Imagine our disappointment/pissed-offness when we arrived at the venue at 8.30 to find that the audience was just leaving. The show had started at 6.30. We had mis-read the info on the tickets, and missed it. Bugger!

Moving to Madrid, we were pleased to find a Brit-ish amateur theatre outfit, The Madrid Players. As soon as they resumed their activities after the summer break, we went along to say hello. Their first show of the season was going to be a Panto, Cinderella. There was no way that BetterArf could be involved: her work keeps her busy until 9.30 each weekday night. I had a shot at auditioning and was not surprised to not get a part. I did go along to the first set-building session, but they don't seem to do sets as I understand them: a few bits of painted cardboard seems to be adequate. Hmm. So I didn't go to any more set-building sessions, but I was keen to see the show - I know they have some very talented actors there - and to see how the painted cardboard things might work out.

This evening BetterArf called out from the depths of the bathroom: 'find out when the Panto's on, organise tickets!' So, off I go to the Madrid Players' blog. It's on on the 7th, 8th and 9th of December! We fecking missed it! Damn.

Salida de Dubai [Leaving Dubai]

I don't think I ever did do a post about our last few days in Dubai, so here goes.

The essential things that we had to accomplish were:
1) Sell/get rid of most of the furniture
2) Sell the car
3) Shut down our Etisalat (phone/internet monopolist) accounts
4) Shut down our DEWA (electricity/water monopolist) account
5) Be ready for the packers/shippers
6) Have a little rest
7) Leave

1) The second-hand stuff market in Dubai is controlled by Pakistani dealers. They will plead poverty and say that no-one wants to buy the kind of stuff we are selling (nearly all IKEA stuff in excellent condition), and offer you a couple of Euros for each item. When you have spat on your hand and agreed the deal, they pull out their wallet to pay you, at which point they see you looking at their huge wad and feel obliged to tell you that they never go anywhere with less than 50,000 Dirhams (€9200), in case they have to buy a car. Bastards, snakes, Sindhis probably*.

2) Selling the car was problematic. I got quite a lot of responses from my advertising, but the damn car could tell something was going on and kept breaking down to try to stop me selling it. In the last week we had: a flat tyre (I never had a wrench that was the right size, so it needed to be taken to the fixers), overheating engine (water pump or something), and finally, just as we were about to drive it to the Traffic Department to complete the ownership transfer formalities, a loose cable on the underside (the guy who was buying it and his buddy are both aircraft engineers - they said the cable was responsible for the changing of the gears: I could have driven it to the Traffic Department, but only in first gear). So we went to the Traffic Department without the car. This was close to closing time on a Thursday evening. They would not be opening again until Sunday morning, and BetterArf and I were flying out on Saturday night. It comes to our turn in the queue and they tell us that the car needs a new roadworthiness test. I explain that it passed this test only five weeks ago and they say, no, it's a new rule, whenever you transfer ownership of a car, it has to have a fresh test. Bugger, the car is actually undriveable at this point, and also about fifteen kilometres away. We go to see the facility manager. He is very understanding, and says we can all sign the documents, and the other guys can bring the car and its test certificate on Sunday and finish it off. So, they pay me the balance, express certain doubts about this guy keeping his word (he is a UAE national, they are Sri Lankan, make of that what you will), we exchange email addresses, and hope and pray that this will work out (they sent me an email a few days later: it did work out).

3) Packing day was the 5th of July. Once the packers had arrived, I tootled down to Etisalat in Jebel Ali to shut down my landline, ADSL and mobile accounts. This proved to be much harder than I had expected. The Etisalat billing system was down. No problem, I said, I can check my balances on the Public Cash Payment Machines. No, said the guy, it won't be accurate. Meaning, any outstanding balance will be till 3am this morning, but I might have spent all morning on the phone to my auntie in Australia, and that won't be shown on the outstanding balance until tomorrow. The system in their office is real-time. But it's down. Fecking hell. I couldn't wait around at their office all day until the system came up again. I tried to pay a bit more than the balances we get from the machine, but the guy said he couldn't accept it. So I paid the exact amount, and if I ever move back to the UAE and try to open accounts with Etisalat, they will insist on being paid the outstanding balance.

They did this to me once before - after my first job in Dubai went to ratshit, I left for a bit. Before I left, I tried to pay off all my bills, but they were unable to determine the outstanding amount on my Internet dial-up account. So it kept on going with some kind of monthly rental charge, and by the time I had returned and tried to open new accounts they insisted that I pay them Dhs 700 (€129) to cover the cost of a service that they had not provided and I had obviously not used. Bastardos!

4) I went to the DEWA (electricity/water company) office a couple of weeks before our departure to find out what the score was with final bills etc. I discovered that I could book the disconnection for a certain date/time, and collect/pay the final bill the next day. This would have been cool, because I expected that they would owe me money in the form of a partial refund of my Dhs 1,000 (€184) security deposit. So I booked the disconnection for 5pm on the 4th July. We were staying at a friend's flat by then, so no power at night was not a problem: we'd also checked with the packers: they would do their work the next day whether there was a/c or not. When we arrived back at the flat on the morning of the fifth, we still had power (the switches and meters for the power supply live in a room down the hall - DEWA do not need to enter the flat to read the meter/disconnect the supply).

Bugger. The DEWA guy turned up just as all the packing was finished: he said he had disconnected it the day before, and wanted to know who had put it on again. All very odd, and it meant that we could not get a final bill before leaving Dubai. I had phoned them a few times during the day, and got responses like 'what's the rush' and 'what do you expect me to do about it?' DEWA have a few gazillion miles to go in terms of customer service.

5) Global Relocations (the packers/shippers) turned up at the appointed time, and did their work efficiently. I was a bit disappointed that they had no kind of trolley with them (there were some heavy things that we needed to get rid of, and wheels would have been useful: in the end we bribed the guys a bit to carry them out). But everything was wrapped and packed securely (not a single broken item at the Madrid end!). They could have maybe used a few fewer rainforests-worth of paper in packing the kitchen stuff, and the three rolls of bubble-wrap (weight: zero, volume 0.25 cubic metre) should not have been sent! The point here is that the shipping cost is based on volume rather than weight, so our estimated 6-8 cubic metres became about 15 when it was all packed. That really fucked our budget.

Throughout the day we were taking out stuff that was not to be shipped and leaving it out for anybody who wanted it. BetterArf called the security guys to tell them it was all there for the taking - it was interesting to see the pecking-order amongst the guys who turned up.

And just as we were about to leave, our new next-door neighbour showed up. He was happy to take some of the plants. It turns out he has a small-holding in Andalucia and occasionally has to come to Dubai to do some work. Small world eh?

Finally, it was done: I had expected that it would have been finished by about 1pm, but it was actually 5pm by the time they finished: too late to do a proper handover with the landlord. The weekend was upon us.

6) Our stuff is packed and on its way. Now to meet the guys who are buying my car at the Traffic Department. This is the point where we realise that there's something dangling and clicking on the road under the car (see item 2). Park the car, call the guys, and wait. BetterArf takes a cab down to the Landlord's office to hand in the documents - they finish at 3pm on a Thursday so she stuffs notes through their letterbox. The indefatiguable car-buyers arrive about an hour later. They lift up the car and have a wriggle underneath it, but need some special tools to fix it. No worries, we all jump into their car and head off to item 2. After the Traffic Department, we head, exhausted, to our sanctuary. Amazingly, the lovely, lovely Sri Lankans who have insisted on buying my broken-down car despite all of the problems, take us there - there's obviously something magical about my ex-car that I failed to appreciate but which they prize highly. Possibly it's the red paint-job. Or the furry dice.

So, sanctuary; one of BetterArf's colleagues is putting us up for a couple of nights in deepest Jumeirah. They say that moving house is one of lifes most stressful experiences, on a par with bereavement and divorce. They are wrong: this was worse than anything! I was so exhausted that I can't remember what we did that night. Ate a bit, drank a bit, slept a lot, me supongo.

7) And so we left. We had, for the first time, forsaken Dubai Airport: we were booked on Abu Dhabi-based Etihad. I'd heard nothing but good reports about this airline, and their fares were the best around. You can check-in your luggage at their office on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai up to (I think) 24 hours before your flight, and take a luxury coach from there to Abu Dhabi Airport. Absolutely bloody fantastic. It can easily take you an hour to drive/taxi to Dubai Airport - depending on traffic; it could be a shitload more and you are always at risk of missing your flight. To Abu Dhabi Airport, it's a virtually guaranteed 45 minutes. The flight was grand, marred only by the fact that the destination was Heathrow, the first-world's worst airport bar none.

Do I miss Dubai? Hardly at all. I do miss my buddies, really I do. And I miss the girl who used to come in and do our mountains of ironing. I miss having an apartment that was big enough to live in and accommodate guests - but next year we will get a bigger one. On the upside, we have proper weather that changes throughout the year, we live in a supremely civilized country, we have a King who tells dickheads like Chavez to 'shut up', we have public transport that works, we have freedom of speech and action, we have democracy, we have a government that doesn't need to launch PR things like 'Madrid Cares' - in general the 'caring' is built into the system, we have so much art and culture that it is difficult to keep up with it all. What we have here is real life. And not a small amount of what BetterArf would describe as 'yabadabadoo'.

I'm still lovin' it.

*This may or may not be racist: but I have met both Indians and Pakistanis who've said 'you trust a Sindhi like you trust a snake'. So nerr.