Sunday, March 13, 2011

Dubai beach safety debate

The English language newspapers here are making a fuss, well, to the extent they ever make a fuss here for fear of upsetting someone, about beach safety in Dubai after three people drowned off Jumeirah Beach nine days ago. 

Beach safety here presents many problems, some of them unique to Dubai.  There is a tendancy for the hotels to cordon off parts of the beaches and anyone not staying at the hotel has to pay a fee to use the stretch of beach.  They provide lifeguards, although if their swimming skills are anything like those of the lifeguards that look after the pools here at our block of flats, I wouldn't rely on them to rescue me.

There are also beach parks patrolled by lifeguards for which you have to pay a small fee that also have changing rooms, a restaurant and parking.

Two of the drownings happened at the stretch near Jumeirah Beach Residence, a group of tower blocks housing 15,000 people near the beach front, and Jumeirah Hilton stretch of beach.  There have been various rumblings that the lifeguards' response was inadequate and the authorities have been careful to point out that the Jumeirah Beach Residence stretch is not a beach park and therefore does not have lifeguards.

The conditions were freakishly rough on the day of the drownings with talk of 4.3m high waves.  The waters off the Dubai coast are normally like the Mediterranean, smooth as a lake with a few tiny waves at the water's edge, although there is usually a strong current that drags you along if you're not paying attention.

I won't speculate too much on why people were swimming on such a rough day, but as a Dubai resident, it wasn't a day you would have bothered going to the beach as it was overcast and windy.  Perhaps for the tourist who doesn't get a chance to swim on a warm beach every day, plunging into the waves was irresistible.

Several arguments have been raised since the incident on how to improve beach safety.  Some want all beaches to be turned into beach parks with lifeguards but that would deprive poor migrant workers who don't live in blocks with swimming pools and don't have the spare cash to pay the fee of their only opportunity to swim.  Some have said they want more signs warning of the dangers of the currents, and again, someone has spoken up on behalf of the migrant workers who can't read English or Arabic. 

There is a surfing association in Dubai that is starting a volunteer lifeguards organisation which is ironic in the sense that it wasn't long ago that the authorities were trying to ban them for being a danger to swimmers. The central problem here is that no one is really accountable as no one pays tax to a Government to provide beach safety services.  It will be interesting to see how the surfers manage the lifeguarding and what support they get from the authorities.   
 

Saturday, March 12, 2011

don't bank on it

Such was the rage induced in the normally mild mannered Sand Warlock by the recent conduct of his bank, I felt I ought to give an insight into what it's like having our generous Emirati benefactors looking after your cash.

Earlier this week, he received a call from his bank stating that the security of his account had been compromised so they would be sending him a new bank card.  "Really, how did that happen?" he asked, knowing he is not the sort of 10watt bulb who would willingly present his bank details to a bloke wearing a stripy jumper, mask and carrying a bag marked "SWAG".

"You were in Sri Lanka," came the reply.

"Well, yes, that was two months ago."  That seemed to be reason enough for the bank to assume someone had been or was about to start stealing money from him.  We had heard previously that credit card fraud was rife in Sri Lanka so having ascertained no actual money had gone missing, he resigned himself to playing the delightful courier tag team game, first experienced when the Sand Warlock arrived in Dubai, in which the bank calls with 25 minutes notice to say they are delivering your card to your home address and when you state you are not going to be there because you are at work, they tell you that therefore you will have to wait another six weeks.  And no, they can't give you any advance warning as to when they'll be coming.

The next day, he received another call saying his "current account was over its limit".

"That's a bit odd," he mused, "I checked the account last night and there was several thousand dirhams in it."

So, we abandoned our flat hunting attempts concerned that thievery was indeed afoot and trotted down to the Dubai Mall branch of his bank.  Bless him he has tried with all his might to set up internet banking but it seems for some reason that you can only do so here should you have the answer to the life, universe and everything.  Therefore, the only way to get anything done involving a bank is to get face to face with a teller, put your sweaty hands round their neck and shake them until they agree to do something rather than sit and quietly utter the word "Hlas"  (no English equivalent but if they were French they would be saying "boff").

To the customer service counter we wended our way.  Oh and by the way, most UAE banks, mobile phone shops etc operate the old fashioned ticketing system where you take a ticket with a number on it and sit patiently until your number comes up.  This seems to be because the Emiratis and many other nationalities in this fine country have seemingly never heard the word "queue" or even the phrase "waiting your turn". 

No cigar, it's to do with credit, so you have to join a different queue.  "No, it's not," I said naively.  "I know it's not, it's to do with potential  bank fraud." 

"I know," quoth he, "but that's what they said so I have to join another queue.  Trust me, it's what I have to do."

"Rightio," I said, and busied myself buying bottles of cooled Evian with which to wet flannels to sooth the Warlock's already steaming brow. 

So, we waited, and we waited, while the bloke the Warlock needed to speak to chatted amiably on the phone for a good half an hour ignoring my best beloved who had taken to standing three feet away from said bank worker fixing him with a ferocious stare. 

And we waited a bit more.  Then finally, after various other customers tried to push in front of the Warlock while he was talking to the bank worker, we found out the message was wrong, it was not the current account, the credit card.  Yes, the credit card.  They want you to pay off a chunk now.

This is something you may have ascertained already regarding credit in the UAE.  Such is the suspicion of debt here, particularly since the economy went Bristols up, that even if you have already paid the minimum payment on your card, they require you to pay another chunk on top of that.  The amount they want you to pay seems to be entirely random and the penalties for not doing so are harsh.

So, the Warlock cheerfully puttered (well, angrily stormed) off to the queue for the bank teller to make a payment on his account.  He took his third ticket and began to queue and of course, when he got to the front of the queue various people tried to push in front of him once again. 

The logic of the trying to push in defeats me even though it is something I've experienced myself at the post office.  Thankfully both post office clerks and bank tellers are made of stern stuff and they state: "I am dealing with this person first," while the pusher states: "But the queue's really long and I'm in a hurry," which the tellers and clerks imperiously ignore.  I think it must be some kind of Dubai ritual of which I have failed to grasp the significance.  Presumably the pushers in assume that people like the Sand Warlock and I sit in half-hour queues several times over purely for our enjoyment and amusement.  I suppose queueing is one of those uniquely British things that we all excel at and complain that other nations are incapable of doing.  So perhaps they spot an English person and assume they are doing us a favour by helping to give us lots more lovely waiting in line time.

Having handed over some Dirhams, we left for a restorative lunch and returned to our flat hunting after a hefty one hour, 45 minutes in the bank.

Then that evening another telephone call informed us that the Warlock needed to pay another 500AED to his account.  "Could someone not have mentioned the actual amount you needed to pay?" questioned I, again, somewhat naively. 

"No," he fumed, "it doesn't really work like that."   

Despite the fact that banks here are open until 9 or 10pm, we concluded it was best not to go back the same day as there was a strong possibility of the Warlock committing murder should we return for more delightful sitting and watching our hair turn grey.

The little trooper went back the next day to pay the money and despite this still received calls stating his account was in deficit from an automated voice for a good 48 hours afterwards.  A call to the call centre ascertained that the messages were incorrect and would stop soon, but not before we had started to have thoughts that the Dubai Police would be on our doorsteps to get angry about unpaid debts within a few hours. 

Thankfully they weren't. 

It's probably one of the best ways of showing what day to day life can be like here.  The theory of everything we bank on at home is there: Credit cards, internet banking systems, money paid or transferred at the touch of a button all for the convenience of the customers, but the reality is somewhat different.

The advantage of banking here is that if you pay money in, be it a cheque, transfer or cash, it's there instantly unlike the spurious "payments may take three to five working days to process" nonsense that we put up with in the UK.  So I suppose it's not all bad.    

Friday, March 11, 2011

On the road again

I now know why most people in Dubai feel able to drive as if they are blind drunk and escaping from a hurricane.  I am now fully qualified to drive any vehicle I choose on the roads in the UAE.  To become so I had to seek the permission of my husband (I know, I know) and then have an eye test which went thus:

VERY BORED OPTICIAN:  Cover your left eye, read those numbers.

SAND WITCH: 7 9 12 6 5.

VBO: Cover your right eye, read those numbers.

SW:  9 4 2 7 13

VBO:  OK, that will be 100 dirhams please, here is your certificate.

I am not joking, that is how long it took to pass the driving eye test.  To be fair, other nationalities who have less stringent driving tests than the UK have to jump through more hoops but for UK nationals, and some others I might add, we just turn up with our licence and as long as we're not suffering from sight loss, Ibrahim's your uncle, Iman's your aunt.

As with many things in the UAE, driving anything other than a taxi would appear to be reserved for the (comparitively) rich. On top of the 100AED for the eye test, there was another 410 for the driving licence itself which made the day somewhat expensive.  Can't wait to see how much they charge me to open a bank account. 

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Sand Witch's lesson of the day

If while in Dubai you want to speak to anyone in a Government/Municipal department including anything to do with needing information from say, the police, do it before 2.30pm.

This is because that is when the working day appears to end for the forementioned departments and if you ring after that they will tell you "ring back tomorrow".

Lesson learned.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

*we built this city, we built this city, we built this city on.... er.... sand*

It occurs to me that unless you've visited the UAE, you wouldn't necessarily know that there is much to the place other than Dubai and if you've sat through the atrocity that is Sex And The City II, the capital, Abu Dhabi.  Incidentally, that was filmed in Morocco, not Abu Dhabi.  There is no way the authorities would allow a film with "sex" in the title to be filmed here.  At least that's what I've been told by some wise teachers who were visiting from Qatar (of which more later*).

Being the adventurous types, we've already ventured outside the Disneyland confines of Dubai and visited Fujairah (well that was to get to Oman)  and the oasis town of Al Ain which is part of the emirate of Abu Dhabi. 

The reasons for our visit to the small emirate of Ajman (drive north from Dubai through Sharjah and keep going) were somewhat complicated but to cut a long story short, it was to do with the fact that UK newspapers seem to want stories about the demise of the meteoric economic rise of the UAE (really Dubai) and someone told us that there were tons of abandoned building projects with cranes, scaffolding etc rusting in the harsh desert conditions. 

This turned out of course not to be true, or at least if it is, the Sand Warlock and I couldn't find them.  Maybe we could have found them if the temperature hadn't suddenly heated up to about 38 degrees and we couldn't cope with wondering around looking any more.

One thing we did spot was this fed up looking chap:


When we first drove past him he was standing up.  I think the heat got a bit much for him, which is something, considering he's a camel.  I'm not sure how I feel about seeing this animal kept in a pen on a hot beach.  I don't know what he's normally used for as there was no one on the beach for camel rides.  Maybe we were there at a quiet time.  Perhaps he's usually trotting up and down the sand with families of icecream slurping kids on his back.  I suppose in the owner's defence, the natural habit of a camel is toasty warm and at least he had a bit of shade.

Although we didn't spot any abandoned building projects, there were several that didn't seem to be being completed with the same speed that they are in Dubai.  

I got the feeling in Ajman that its Sheikhs would probably have liked it to be like Dubai had they thought of it first before the economy went to pants and they had to be bailed out by Abu Dhabi.  It's tiny in comparison to this place but you get the impression they were planning to get geared up for tourism and are still hoping for a slice of the pie as there is already one luxury hotel in place and the new building projects appear to be hotels and apartments.  It's almost as if Ajman is Dubai pre-boom.  If our brief wonder through the back streets are anything to go by, they haven't got the hang of efficient sewage disposal yet.  The stench was so bad that I gagged. 

I can't predict whether the hotels they were building will ever have guests or the apartments will ever be occupied.  I somehow doubt it if they can't sort out the sewage.  Such is the economic optimism of the country even post-boom, I expect they'll pull it off somehow. 

*We had dinner and a few drinks with a friend of a friend plus two friends who are teaching in Doha, capital of Qatar who filled us in on some interesting facts about the country which is a short hop across the Gulf from here.  Like Dubai, it has a big ex-pat community but is less "happening".  There are no pavements.  People drive everywhere.  Plastic surgery is available on their equivalent of the NHS.  Like Dubai, you can experience the sinful excesses of the west in the shape of boozy brunches at posh hotels and this sits along side the relatively strict local adherence to Islam.  Ie, the newspapers are full of adverts requesting "Muslim woman of marriageable age" to make a match with people's sons.  I have yet to see that here but I suspect I might see it if I could read the Arabic language papers.  Really must dust off the text book.