Birthday

We're still working on getting the jeep fixed. There will be more on that later.

Today was my daughter's fifth birthday. We were considering throwing her a small party at an amusement arcade or restaurant until we realized that nothing is open in the daytime during Ramadan. Instead, we took Tia and Lucas to see Toy Story 3. With the show being at 12:15 on a Friday, I figured the place would be swamped with tons of kids around so we got there 30 minutes early. Including the four of us, there were seven people in the movie theater.

One nice thing about it not being crowded was when Tia told one of the ushers that it was her birthday, he came back with a glossy Toy Story 3 picture with a nice birthday greeting written on the back. The cost was 47 dirhams each ($12.90) and that was with us already having the 3D glasses from Shrek. When I see it written in dollars, it doesn't seem as much, but in dirhams it was a little bit of a shock.

Afterward, I wanted to take the kids to a play center, but it wasn't open until 6:00 pm so we just went home and had cake. I still can't get over how things specifically aimed at small children here don't open until late in the evening. There's a free Sesame Street show that's playing from 9:00 pm to 1:00 am at the shopping mall near our place. It features "everyone’s favourite Sesame characters – Elmo, Bert, Ernie and Khokha ."(Khokha?) In the end, we had a pretty good, low key day with friends in our apartment building. For me, that's better than trying to cram in as much fun as possible until we burst.

Repair (Part One)

I was able to get the paperwork for the insurance policy with no problem. Driving to the vehicle registration place and parking a ways away from the building was a snap. Within ten minutes, the woman behind the counter had approved another year of registration and given me the sticker to put on the license plate. Fortunately, the Jeep passed the inspection a couple of hours before getting into an accident so I was good to go. It's too bad that getting a car repaired here isn't that smooth.

Just after leaving the vehicle registration place, I headed straight of the insurance company to have the Jeep assessed. As mentioned before, the company only does assessments from 10:00 to 11:00 am during Ramadan. I arrived at 9:40 to be safe and couldn't find any parking. Now that parking in that area is paid parking, the city has even drawn lines in the middle of the road for cars to park. Even with that, there was no parking available so I double parked along with a few other cars and buses. I ran up to hand in the paperwork and the man behind the desk warned me that the police have been fining people recently so I should move my car. After driving around for about 10 minutes, I proudly found a place about two blocks away.

When 10:00 came, the assessor led a parade of people around to various cars and took pictures of the damage. Most of the cars and buses were the ones that I had seen double parked previously. Everyone was shouting for him to "assess" their car next. When I finally got the assessor to look at my car, he walked halfway to it, yelled at me for parking so far away and told me to double-park my car with the rest of them. At least by then I could stay by my car and wait for the guy. After he "assessed" the damage (i.e. took a few pictures of it) he told me to bring my car back at about 2:00 tomorrow so someone could drive it across town to a mechanic, have it repaired, and bring it back. What a convenience! I don't see how this plan could possibly go wrong.

Vehicle Registration (Part Two)

Almost got it done today. Things were going pretty well when I pulled up to get my vehicle inspected. I needed to pay 120 dirhams (US$ 33) to get a paper to give the guy who checks things out. There was no sign saying that but I saw people in front of me giving him a paper. When I asked, he told me to leave my car in line and get it. I got in the wrong line and ended up waiting longer than needed. For anyone registering vehicles in Abu Dhabi, go all the way to the cashier and pay the money to get the receipt. After the inspection was done, it was time to register everything. I got a number and waited for an hour only to find that I needed to show my inspection report to get another paper to show the woman doing my registration get a piece of paper. Hint to those people registering cars in Abu Dhabi: go to the desk on the opposite side of the waiting area to get your stamped copy of the inspection report.

Then it came. I was missing the vital document: proof of insurance. I carried over the insurance policy from the previous owner until September, but they needed proof of insurance for the next year. Luckily, they have the offices of seven insurance providers in the next building. Unluckily, they don't have the insurance that I have my SUV under so I had to wander around Abu Dhabi to find their office.

On my way there, I was waiting at a light when a bus clipped my car. Luckily, I only had a big dent in my bumper and a smashed tail light, but the bumper came off the bus. Now, I've heard that the police will generally come pretty quickly and settle things within minutes. I'll admit that the police were there fairly quickly, but we spent at least 30 minutes by the side of the road in the heat and another 30 minutes at the station dealing with this. The driver (Pakistani?) was arguing vehemently with the police that I had somehow moved and was to blame for the accident. I feel bad for the guy because he will likely lose a month or two salary over it, but I feel a lot less bad due to his blatant lies.

In the end, got a paper with the report to show the mechanic or insurance company or whoever asks to say that the accident wasn't my fault. Apparently, it's illegal here for a mechanic to do body work on a car without an accident report due to all the hit and run cases. After I got the paper, I was told to go to Buddy's insurance company to look at my car and tell me how much they'll give me to repair it. (I'll be interested to see how that turns out.) I tried to go there today but by the time I found it, they were just closing. A worker told me that they were open from 8:00 am tomorrow and I should come back then. Luckily, someone else who works there and overheard my story told me to be there form 9:45 because the claims adjuster only looks at cars from 10:00 to 11:00 during Ramadan. Of course!

I was able to call my insurance company from home and buy a new policy from my provider. I have to go pick up the policy from their office tomorrow. Hopefully then I'll be able to register the car finally. It's a good thing I already had the inspection.

Vehicle Registration (Part One)

The other day, I noticed that the registration on my jeep expired last week. That was when I recalled how renewing my vehicle registration was on my list of things to do within a couple of days of returning from the States. Back in June it seemed so far away. Also, I wasn't considering the hassle that renewing my registration would be during Ramadan.

After living in Abu Dhabi for just over a year, I've come to expect that I'll have to make a few trips any time I want to do anything official like getting an I.D., bank account, or registering for something. Tonight, I wasn't disappointed. In the U.S. or Japan, you can count on being able to look at a website or call ahead to find things like hours of operation or documents needed. Fortunately, institutions in the U.A.E. have progressed beyond that and no longer feel the need to stick to such rigid methods of passing along information.

Anytime something needs to be done, I assume that I'll need at least one reconnaissance mission to find out the real hours of operation or times I can come back when I won't have to wait for three hours. Sometimes there will be the document that I need that wasn't listed on the website. Looking at the website can be marginally helpful and calling while expecting someone to answer is laughable. During Ramadan when working hours are completely different, count on the usual hours to be the exact opposite of normal hours.

Since most Ramadan hours involve the evening when people have eaten and had something to drink so they aren't sleepy, hungry and dehydrated. The website said they were open until 9:00 pm so I thought maybe they would be open later. I wasn't surprised to see that when I got there at 8:20, they were closed and there were very few cars there. Suddenly, within a minute of arriving, about three or four cars got in line behind me to get their cars checked out. I must've happened to arrive just as the call to prayer was finishing. Within minutes, the place was packed. People around me said that the Vehicle Registration Center would likely open after prayer around 9:30, about an hour later. I figured I would wait.

Five minutes later, the manager of the center drove up and told everyone to go home and come back tomorrow between 8:30a m and 4:00 pm. I waited around to see if anything happened anyway but everyone else started to go. Later on someone was telling me that they would be open until 6:00 pm, but I wouldn't count on it. I think that means they'll be open tomorrow until they feel like closing.

Thirst

Over the past few days I've been pushing through the jet lag and going into work. Something that I find helps is a constant infusion of caffeine that I get though sipping on tea throughout the day. Unfortunately, with this being Ramadan, I can't have any food or drink at my desk. That means that any time I want to get a snack or even get a drink of water, I have to go into the break room. This has been severely hindering my productivity. I would feel bad, but based on the constant number of people in the break room, it seems to be hindering everyone's productivity. Last year when I was just starting at the school, it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know everyone, because everyone in the school was in the break room eating their lunch. This year, it's working out to be the same.

Also with Ramadan, we have shorter work hours. We're only expected to be there from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and I've gotten funny looks from people when I'm still sitting at my desk at 3:05 because I'm in the middle of something. I have to admit that aspect of the holy month is nice, but I'm still thirsty all the time.

In addition, when trying to schedule time to run or cycle, I now have to leave early in the morning not only to avoid the heat, but to avoid sunrise as well. Wednesday and Thursday I went running and had to make sure that I was finished with my drink before the sun rose. (Here is a photo of the lights along the road I run, the Corniche in Abu Dhabi.) I suppose that I'm being overly paranoid, but I don't want to deal with the hassle of being stopped by a policeman.

This morning, I went cycling and only the hard core people were there because it's hard to drink on our ride. It turned out that I wasn't quite as hard core as I thought when I got separated from the group after about 10 kilometers into the ride. I just couldn't adjust to the heat. As it was, I was always looking around for when no cars were around so I could eat or drink something to keep from passing out.

In the end, I made it home where I can sit around in the air conditioning with a blanket on my lap eating and drinking all that I want.

Return

After about 8 weeks away, I've returned to Abu Dhabi. Getting on a plane from the green midwest United States was a bit depressing when I thought about all the the beautiful weather I'd had in Milwaukee and what I was facing with coming to Abu Dhabi in the middle of August. In addition, while I know it's hard to have sympathy for someone after a two-month holiday, the thought of going back to work after all the fun I'd had with family and friends in both the U.S. and Japan was depressing me even more.

In the end the flight was pretty uneventful, it wasn't as shockingly hot as I was expecting, we were able to catch a taxi easily, and arrived at our apartment after dark. We got home, unloaded our full limit of baggage we were allowed to bring on the plane and set to getting back into our lives in Abu Dhabi.

The first matter was to mop up all the water from the overflowed bucket that was collecting water from the ceiling. Then, I had to go down to the maintenance guy to tell him to send someone to look at our air conditioner the next day to do something about the dripping. After that, I went to where we parked our cars to make sure that they were running after not being moved for two months. Luckily, the covers we put on them to protect them from the sun and sand hadn't blown away and were still intact. I moved my filthy Jeep to the front of our building to where I could get to it easily the next day to go to work where the guy who washes would clean it up.

Meanwhile, my wife worked to get the internet running again and to figure out what we needed to do to get our mobile phones working again. We had a year subscription that expired while we were away. It's easy enough to renew them, but it was just a matter of finding out the process.

Because we were all jet lagged, my son woke me up at 3:00 in the morning and it was then that I realized that I should have bought food for lunch the night we got in. We had cleaned out our refrigerator and freezer before we left in the event that there was a power outage (something that happened to friends of ours who came home to a huge mess to clean up after food sat in their refrigerator for a couple of months). With Ramadan having started a week ago, the cafeteria was closed during the daylight hours. In the end I took a packed lunch of breakfast bars and orange juice drink boxes.

While there was a lot to do to get settled in, it's still nice to be back. Hopefully, I'll feel better after I recover from the jet lag.

Zayed

His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan was the man who was basically responsible for creating the country the United Arab Emirates. He was able to unite the seven Emirates into one country. I think that having Sheikh Zayed be the last entry on this list is very appropriate considering how revered he is in not just his home Emirate of Abu Dhabi, but in all of the U.A.E. I think that the closest thing an American can come to understanding the average Emirati's feelings towards Sheikh Zayed would be if George Washington or one of the other founding fathers had died within the past ten years.

Throughout my blog, you will read a lot of snide comments about the U.A.E. and Abu Dhabi, but that's just my writing style. Sure there are things that happen that can make living here a trying experience, but overall, this is a pretty nice place to live. Almost everything nice about this place is due to the infrastructure that Sheikh Zayed set up initially.

There are oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, that took the oil wealth and gave it to a privileged few, leaving the rest of the country to fend for itself under oppressive laws. Sheikh Zayed, on the other hand, saw the need to not only spread the wealth around, but to create institutions of higher learning that anyone could attend in order to create an educated population. He also looked to the future, investing the country's surplus wealth in long-term investments for when the oil eventually dries up. He created parks and loads of public green space so families could relax outside when the weather is nice. He was actively involved in the construction of the Grand Mosque, a beautiful landmark where he is laid to rest.

Sure, not all of his plans panned out the way that he'd hoped, but he did a very nice job of founding a country when other countries in similar situations have failed. For that, His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, is rightfully revered. I don't think you'll get a lot of argument from anyone on that, least of all me.