I like driving in my car

It will be interesting to see whether these women of Saudi Arabia go ahead with their planned protest of getting into their cars and driving on June 17th.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/saudi-police-arrest-two-in-clampdown-on-protest-against-ban-on-women-drivers

This story has been cooking along for a few days now and it's been pointed out several times that there's no actual law against women driving in the Kingdom, it's just enforced by a conservative, religious mindset.  

Tax free my arse

One of the great lies that is perpetuated by those who would persuade you to move to this land of opportunity is that it is tax free.

It's one of those Dubai technicallys that I've talked about before in that technically, there is no income tax in that it's not deducted from your salary before you get the chance to spend it, but there are charges elsewhere that are simply tax by another name.  Booze is heavily taxed although cigarettes are clearly not because they're pretty cheap from what I've heard.  Groceries seem to be suspiciously expensive, although that could be due to the cost of importing everything but the camel meat, cucumbers and few other fruit and veg that are produced here.

My favourite charge by any other name that I've discovered so far is the housing fee.

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority or DEWA for short (pronounced doowah diddy diddy dum diddy dey in our house) gave us the gift of the knowledge of this marvellous fee when we received our first bill which seemed to relate to a time when we were technically the tenants of the flat but it was empty because we hadn't moved out of the old place yet.  There it was, a 667AED charge (£112 at the time of writing) for housing fee, nil charges for electricity or water as yet.

Shome mishtake shurely, we thought. Let's ring DEWA up or go and see them and find out what's going on. Or, at least, let's think about that doing that while we mentally psych ourselves up for the torment of communicating with Emirati officials and in the mean time, ask my new boss who has lived in the area for 18 years.

Bad news.  The housing fee is payable by everyone and is calculated as a percentage of the rent you pay. It pays for street lighting, street cleaning and maintenance, waste collection and "a host of other services".  Sound slightly familiar?  Sounds rather like the artist formerly known as poll tax formerly known as the community charge.  That's right. Council tax. The blighters!  Mustn't grumble really because the streets where we live, admittedly a prime tourist area, are extremely clean and I can't remember ever seeing any litter.  And I have never seen a non-working street light.  It also tickles me that that's almost exactly the same amount we used to pay to Hounslow Council for our flat in Ealing.  They definitely had a much better record on recycling there but I used to wade through piles of litter, dog shit and flytipping on my walk to the tube. I did have a lovely local councillor that I used to moan to about youths smoking drugs on the stairs outside my flat.  That's not really a problem we have here, obviously, as you would be bloody stupid to be seen smoking drugs in any public place here unless you had a strong desire to be sent to prison.

My second favourite hidden tax is the fee they charge you to join a library.  I am poor as a church mouse at the moment because although I'm reasonably ok for freelance work, it can take time to get paid here.  So, I thought: "I know, let's join a library so I can have plenty of things to read without shelling out on Amazon, (well, a bookshop because internet shopping is no go because of the insane postal system), and creating a personal library that I will some day have to get rid of or carry home to the UK.  So, I had a quick look on Mr Internet to find my nearest tome source.  "50AED to join and a 150AED refundable deposit." Blighters again!  £33 to join the library.  I've paid a few library fines in my time but getting charged to join?  Do me a favour.  So I have had to consign joining the library to the growing list of "things I will do when I get paid which will hopefully be early next month".

I'm not clever enough to work out if all these little charges that you pay, including things like 1,000AED deposit to get your electricity and water connected, add up to what you would pay in income tax back home.  I doubt it. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a lot closer to it than the authorities here would like you to think.

Vertigo

I came across these chaps doing some fancy work with ropes the other day.

Unfortunately I missed it but they were doing something which involved climing up this building:

I would like to think there is some kind of specialist training for all the people that need to climb up the outside of various skyscrapers but knowing Dubai, there probably isn't. They probably just factor the cost of people plunging to their deaths into their construction budgets.  Rather them than me as living in this forest of skyscrapers has taught me that I have quite bad vertigo.  I never really had that much cause to be more than five floors up before so it's not something I thought about. Despite the vertigo, I have started to become a connoisseur of skyscrapers.

This one that was being climbed is actually one of my favourites because it looks like a big vertical boat half buried in the ground:

There really are some bonkers looking ones with random spherical features, ones that look a bit twisty, ones that look like cheese graters, ones that look like transformers and ones with shards of glass apparently shooting off them at regular intervals.  These big glass towers are obviously totally impractical in this climate because they are effectively giant greenhouses that the air con has to work much harder to keep cool, but this is the land of penis envy so the taller and shinier the better.

Better lay off the magic

It's occurred to me that should I ever get my wish to go to Saudi Arabia, I probably shouldn't mention my Sand Witch alter ego in case I end up in jail.

http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/maid-held-for-alleged-sorcery-2011-02-15-1.356630

That's settled, if we do go there, we will have to go in Kevin the Toyota rather than on the tandem broomstick so we don't get accused of sorcery.

It *do* matter if they're black or white

You may remember that I've explained that driving in Dubai seems to be a pursuit mainly carried about by lunatics who are escaping from a hurricane.

Cutting up, undertaking, tailgating, non-existent lane discipline, jumping red lights, driving with your baby or small child sitting on your lap and many other idiotic driving behaviours seem to be not only accepted but positively encouraged by the transport authorities here.  So much so that I have been told that trainee drivers here are taught: "If someone is in front of you and you want to get past them, pull up behind them and flash your lights so that they will know you want them to get out of the way."  It makes driving a pretty daunting experience.  I know plenty of people who just don't bother at all, choosing to rely on taxis, buses and the Metro.  I tend to drive only when I know exactly where I'm going as the one way systems here were designed by the same lunatic that does most of the driving, or, if I have the chief navigator in the passenger seat.

There are speed cameras which are set to go off if you are doing 20km per hour above the speed limit. If you're involved in a crash, if no one's seriously injured, the decision about whose fault it is and whether you're given a penalty is usually decided at the road side by the police.  If you get given a green bit of paper, it's not your fault, if you get a pink bit, it is, and you usually have to pay a fine and get black points put on your licence which are similar to penalty points in the UK except it would appear that they stay on your record for ever rather than being wiped off after three years. You seem to be able to accrue a huge amount of these black points without losing your licence. I haven't worked out how many it is yet but it's safe to say I think the Sand Warlock and I are safe from ever losing our licences in this way.

So now, they're introducing white points which means that if you don't commit any traffic violations during the year, they go towards wiping off your black points.  This has been roundly hailed as ingenious by the authorities and condemned as assinine by road safety campaigners and residents alike.

I can't help but think that effort that went to thinking up this initiative, which lets face it will benefit bad, unsafe drivers who are on sabbatical from motoring lunacy, rather than people who habitually obey the traffic laws.

I hate to bang on about it but the driving really is genuinely insane in Dubai.  I'm getting used to it after four months here and can now be a passenger who keeps her eyes open during car journeys.  There's a saying on the You Know You're In Dubai Facebook page which states that You know you're in Dubai when you think: "Sorry I'm late, I crashed on the way here" is an every day excuse for turning up late for a meeting.  That genuinely is no exaggeration, such is the extent to which driving randomly and insanely is the expected norm here.

Getting hot hot hot

Without wishing to state the bleedin' obvious, it's getting a bit toasty here.

I got in the car with my new boss today and her car themometer said 42degrees.  I think it's fair to say that that's fairly warm.

Our new flat is in an Arabian-style building so it's fairly sensibly built to withstand the heat. We don't really notice the heat until we go outside.  Even first thing in the morning or late at night it's like stepping out into a fan heater or a warm bath, depending on whether it's humid or not. 

This isn't officially summer, according to my new boss who's lived in Dubai for 18 years.  Officially summer is June onwards when it's unbearable to be outside at all.  We're going to a "last barbecue before summer" barbecue on Friday which seems a bit arse about face doesn't it?  Needs must I suppose.  I'm defiantly going out for little walks because I think I will go mad being inside all day although I'm already getting some fairly strange looks as I stride down Emaar Boulevard on the way to Dubai Mall.

I spotted a sprinkler on some improbably green grass the other day.  I really wanted to run through it as we used to on the lawn when we were little.  (Look, you made your own entertainment in rural Nottinghamshire).  I've since learned that there's a high instance of Legionnaires Disease here so perhaps it wasn't such a great idea anyway.

I say tomato

I think it's safe to say this chain of trainer shops would have to change its name before moving into the UK market.

I can see their thinking: "Our job is to provide super shoes for athletes and all that so they can be dead good at sport, like, and we're dead dedicated to the part of the body we're dressing, The Athlete's Foot.  Let's call our shop that."  Unfortunately, no one told them that Athlete's Foot is an unpleasant fungal foot thing associated with excessively sweaty feet that you wouldn't necessarily want your shoes associated with.  Oh well.