Room with a view

My accommodation for the first 10 days or so in Dubai was in a hotel, not far from the main centre of Dubai proper, but nonetheless some distance away from the main road (Sheikh Zayed Road) where all the skyscrapers, big buildings and other developments are located.

Nonetheless, the view from my hotel afforded me with some perspective of what the city of Dubai is like. At the time I did not have a clue as to which buildings were important or grandiose or ones that I should take particular note of.

However, one of the buildings which Dubai has become well known for (as the tallest building in the world today) dominates the skyline, pretty much wherever you happen to be in Dubai. This photo of the Burj Dubai was taken from my hotel in March 2008 and at the time it was not quite at the height it is at today...

I have since taken photos of the Burj Dubai at its' now final height. It still has some way to go before completion and fit-out, but it is nonetheless a very impressive and imposing building. Here is my most recent photo of it taken at close to "ground zero" from a development nearby known as Old Town...

Unfortunately there is a haze that seems to be constantly a part of the Dubai skyline which does not do the building nor the photo justice...you have to see it with your own eyes to really appreciate the enormity of it and the engineering expertise that has gone into creating it.

A rainy day in Sharjah

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would put up some photos of what the roads near my workplace/office in Sharjah are like when it rains. Well, it certainly has been raining in the last 5-6 days, and moreso than I can recall seeing back in Australia for a long time.

This photo was taken last week after a night of heavy showers (including thunder and lightning). Because there is no stormwater drainage system in the industrial areas of Sharjah, this is what it is like in many of the surrounding roads. It takes days for it to dissipate and unfortunately when it continues to rain for several days, as it has done, it only gets worse.

This photo was taken 3 days later - same street (if you can call it a street) and bear in mind there is a lot of traffic that drives through here. Apparently it is not unusual to have rain and thunder storms in the UAE at this time of year, however it is now a little over 1 year since I arrived and it certainly was not like this at the time I arrived.

Getting out of the car to go into my office is not the most pleasant experience in these conditions. This photo shows where I have to "park" and you can guess what my shoes look like after walking to the front door of the office...

BTW, this was completely awash 3 days later. And you can see on the right of this photo people don't particularly care where they park...footpaths (where there are any) are as good a spot as any...

Driving in UAE!

My first driving experience in Dubai was not with me behind the wheel...

I was picked up by one of our company drivers and driven from my hotel to my office in Sharjah. The driver (whom I have since got to know quite well after spending numerous hours in traffic together) seemed pleasant and would answer any of my tourist-like questions along the way..."What building is that?" and "Where are we now?"...you get the picture. I was new and had no idea of where I was.

Whilst it was early morning, it was nonetheless extremely busy on the roads and I was astounded by the amount of traffic, the speed that vehicles were travelling at and the (almost) complete disregard for road rules. I had seen a bit of it the day before, but this was the first time I was experiencing what it would be like to travel to my office each day - quite an eye-opener.

Having now been here for several months, my assessment of the level of driving skill, courtesy, regard for other road users and common sense is so far below anything I have ever experienced before, that I would have to say it is probably the most dangerous place I have ever driven a vehicle. This may sound exaggerated, but I kid you not, driving in Dubai, and pretty much any of the Emirates (states) in the UAE, is not for the faint-hearted.

I was provided with a driver and vehicle by my company for the first 2 weeks and after that I was on my own in a (very) small rental car. I have to admit that during first 2 weeks of watching my driver and the traffic go hell-for-leather with each other at insane speeds (+120Km/hr), I was really, really worried. I have always felt that I am a driver of reasonable abilities, but my concern(s) was not with my driving, but moreso with all of the other irresponsible idiots on the roads. This fact, along with my then minimal knowledge of the roads, directions to travel and the inability to simply do a U-turn on the majority of roads made for some very tense and frustrating moments in the first few weeks of driving here.

One more than one occasion (sometimes 2 or 3 times in the one journey) I would get lost, try to re-trace my route and become even more hopelessly lost. Again, more than once, I would end up doing "laps" of the same route whilst trying to get home and what should have been a 45 minute trip would end up taking me up to 2 hours. I have to say that at one point I was ready to pull-over, park the car and catch a taxi. Nevertheless I persisted and eventually I started learning which lane to be in in order to get to the right destination. A number of Dubai's main roads are multi-laned and it is imperative to know which lane to be in when you are getting close to the exit you need to take - otherwise you just end up going the wrong way (or worse still taking the wrong exit) and become frustrated about how you are going to get back on track. It also does not help that a lot of the roads and exits are poorly marked (signs literally ony a couple of hundred metres from the exit or turn-off and traffic at high speeds make for some very dangerous manouevres). And sometimes the signs you are looking for are obstructed by construction work or trees or other objects.

My overall impression of driving here is that it would be great if it weren't for all the other drivers...so many of them obviously come from countries where there is poor road-use etiquette and little or nor policing of road rules and hence they bring with them the same bad habits. Equally, the local population (Emirati) have shockingly bad driving habits - poor lane discipline, high-speed weaving from lane to lane, no use of indicators, excessive speeding, tail-gating literally inches from the car in front at very high speeds...unfortunately the local police seem to either ignore all of this behaviour or accept it, particularly as I have seen many police cars doing some or all of the above at one time or another.

There is a very good (and very funny but true) description of some of the local driving "habits" by a local well-known blogger which is worth reading. You can click on this link to read it:


http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.com/2009/01/dubai-driving-tips.html


There is also a very funny video clip on YouTube about driving in Dubai and how mindless some drivers really are (having seen some of this behaviour first-hand, I think it is hilarious, but unfortunately very sad and true). Here is a link to the YouTube clip:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfPTGTGLA3E


I will post some photos of driving conditions here soon.

Catch up on the early days

This is the first of some personal reflections on my early days in Dubai...I had a baptism of fire. I arrived here on 18 March from Australia and expected to have (as I had planned) 5 days to acclimatise, see a little a bit of the city and get used to the time difference.

Little did I know that I was expected to do what so many unsuspecting newly arrived ex-pats are required to do - start work within (literally) hours of getting off the plane. So, I arrived at approx. 7am and by 10.30am I was in the office finding out just what it was like to work in the UAE.

Quite frankly, I had no idea of what I was supposedly doing...I was tired, somewhat out of sorts and struggling with my first serious business meeting with a finance company and my new boss (CEO) and not having any idea about how business is done in the UAE. Welcome to Dubai!

Later the same day, I was driven to our administration office (and also one of our factories) in Sharjah, approx. 35 kms from our Dubai office, where I am based for 3-4 days of my working week. Even allowing for the fact that I was tired (and perhaps somewhat emotional), I was nonetheless a little shocked with the location of my new office - in an industrial area (known locally as Industrial Area No.5) which is hard to describe - you have to see it to believe it...so I will let the photos do the talking...

This is one of the roads in the industrial area near my office. Looks quite innocuous, but looks are deceiving.

As you can see, all the cars parked on the side of the roads are covered in dust/sand. They have been there for weeks or months awaiting repair, or possibly are being scrapped for parts. There are probably hundreds, maybe thousands of them in the surrounding industrial areas. Every day I drive to work there are different vehicles parked along the back roads of the Industrial areas. And some of them are quite recent models.

These are some of the better roads. A lot of the minor adjoinging roads are dirt, very uneven, strewn with loose debris, and quite often flooded with overflowing sewers and/or stormwater when it rains during winter as there is no stormwater drainage system. It is not pleasant to drive through water and/or sewerage up to the door sills of your car. Next time it rains, I will post some photos. Surprisingly, for a desert country renown for its high temperatures, desert conditions and little rain by comparison to my expectations, it has rained a number of times during the autumn and winter months.

Our new car

In early August, I finally took delivery of our new car, a Nissan Altima sedan. I had been driving a rental car originally provided by my employer but this had to go as I was now responsible for getting my own car and after some time, picked out the Altima as our mode of transport here in Dubai.

It is similar to the Nissan Maxima available in Australia, perhaps slightly smaller, but still a good size vehicle and very nicely equipped. It drives very smoothly and despite it only being a 4 cylinder 2.5L engine, has plenty of power and if you didn't know you could be fooled into thinking that it is a small 6 cylinder. For those of you who may be interested, here is a link to the local dealer's website showing details of the vehicle:

http://www.nissan.arabianautomobiles.com/vehicle/altima/index.html

Perhaps it could only happen here, but I picked the car up in the evening and drove approximately 5 kms to a service station to get fuel and purchase a 'Salik' tag, an electronic sticker to go on the windscreen for the toll gates on the main roads. I went inside to purchase the tag and upon returning to the car I found a man leaning over the bonnet with a newspaper opened up and him scrawling on the paper with a pen and a cigarette hanging from his mouth and ash droppings on the bonnet.Of course I did not take this event particularly well... a brand new car literally 10 minutes out of the showroom and this guy was using it as a desk and ashtray. I yelled at him (in English) and whilst I don't think he understood what I was saying, he certainly knew I was not happy and made a shrugging gesture as if to say "What is the problem, I was only reading the paper?"

J and I went for a drive on the weekend to Abu Dhabi and stayed overnight with a friend/colleague from Australia (whom also works in the same group of companies) and his fiance. It made a nice change from Dubai and gave J an opportunity to have a look around Abu Dhabi. It also was an opportunity to find out how the new car would be over distances - I have to drive quite regularly to Abu Dhabi for work and the smaller rental car was very unpleasant to do the journey in. Overall impressions - really nice car, very comfortable and nicely appointed, cruises very smoothly, plenty of power for overtaking and it does not feel like a sardine can on wheels.

Here is a photo J took when we stopped near a mosque on the way to Abu Dhabi....

Start of my working week - Sundays!

Yes, Sundays are the equivalent of Mondays back home i.e. the start of my working week, which after having been here for a number of months, still feels slightly odd. (J says that the only way to keep track which day is which is by having an egg on a weekend morning, which is what we used to do in Adelaide.)

My working day is a very early start - up by 5.45-6.00am, shower, shave, breakfast and check e-mails before I leave home. At this time of the morning it is still early afternoon back in Oz due to the time difference of 5.5 hours (or 6.5 during summer) and so a good time to catch up on messages and replies if required.

Generally I'm on the road by 7-.00am-7.15am for the anywhere between 40-90 minute (and sometimes longer) drive to Sharjah. The office is 41 Kms from where we live. Big variation in time to get there I hear you ask? At certain times of the year there is much less traffic on the road due to holidays, etc and at other times when the schools re-commence and as the the number of ex-pats return from their annual holidays, the roads get busier again and the drive to work gets longer.

A drive to work of 90 minutes is, on average, the longest time it takes due to traffic congestion or an accident or bad weather, although I have had a number of experiencces of just over 2 hours.

When it is very hot, I try not to wear a suit, but unfortunately there is an unwritten requirement (which I cannot ignore) that suits are compulsory at any sort of business meeting irrespective of the weather and/or humidity. By hot, I mean mid to high 40's (celcius) and humidity in the 80-90% range. It is ludicrous to have to wear a suit in such conditions so I try to minimise it by attempting to arrange all my business meetings on one or two days per week. The rest of the week it is still long sleeve shirts and ties, but at least no jacket.

Business is very different to anything I have experienced in Oz...much more backward - I am not sure if that is the right word. For example, on the same day a few months ago, I spent 1 hour waiting for a bank to amend a document before I could sign it (a 1 minute job on a word processor) and further 50 minutes at another branch of the same bank listening to the manager talk about the hot weather at that time of year over 2 cups of very strong coffee and despite my most determined efforts to get him to discuss with me what I was really there for.

There are other business idiosyncracies which I have not experienced before, like the "Office Boy", someone who looks after all the senior and middle management's requirements in the office from getting stationery and cups of tea/coffee to opening doors and carrying your briefcase or laptop out to the car for you. In my case, the Office Boy even washes my car for me (I have never asked, he just does it every couple of days). It seems sort of pointless, as within half an hour of it being cleaned there is a fine layer of dust/dirt over the car due to the dirt roads around the office. But it gets done and I give him 10 dirhams (local currency) each time which he is very happy to receive and I feel guilty about because it is only about AUD $3 - $4 (depending upon the exchange rate of the day).

Generally, my working day finishes anywhere between 6 and 7.30pm. On occasion this will stretch out to 9.00pm depending on what I have on. However, on average, if I can leave the Sharjah office by 7pm, then I am home by around 8pm. All up, it makes for a very long day and even longer time not being wih J.

Our "stuff" from home

We had received a call from our removalist company advising that our 8 cartons with all of our wordly possessions (well the ones we decided to ship over here) had arrived and would be delivered to us very soon. This was very exciting news for J in particular as it meant that she would soon have her treasured cooking implements and pots/pans, etc, along with our music CD's and DVD movies, books, and a bunch of other belongings.

Well, as it turned out, our cartons from Australia hadn't actually arrived as we were first led to believe - they were somewhere in China due to something the Chinese customs authorities didn't like about their contents. Now, why they were in China in the first place was a bit of a mystery, however our freight forwarders assured us they were onto it and would have it resolved quickly...that was 4 days earlier...and a total of 4 weeks since they were picked up from us in Adelaide. This was supposed to be air freight and therefore much quicker than sea freight.

Over the next couple of weeks, I made numerous phone calls back to our Australian removalists, sent e-mails, and generally started to panic about where our stuff was. This was all happening within a few days of the start of the Olympics in Beijing and we were becoming increasingly concerned that once the Olympics started we would never see our cartons.

Finally we received encouraging news - the Chinese authorities had now cleared our cartons and they were on the way to us here in Dubai. This actually took about another 7 days, but nevertheless they finally arrived, a tad over 6 weeks after they had been picked up in Adelaide. And J proudly announced after un-packing everything that we had no casualties.

J spent a lot of time unpacking and attempting to find somewhere to put everything. We both wondered why we decided to ship so much stuff over, but this is in hindsight and we will just have to live with it now. We ended up buying a small bookcase from Ikea to accommodate books, magazines CD's and DVD's.

Now all I need to do is to take up with the removalist/freight forwarder the issue of having paid for airfreight and receiving sea freight service...