Chick with a tick

As some of you know, I have joined a Nike Running Club.



.
.
.
.

I've just left a bit of space there for those of you who know me of old to pick yourselves up from the floor and sew up your sides and opt for surgery on the various hernias that you will now have ruptured.

But no, really, I have.

I've written before about the 'Dubai stone' that creeps on many who move to the Emirate and my various attempts to combat it and I shan't bore you again, but after making some pitiful attempts in the gym over the summer, a friend brought the running club to my attention.

How you go from being a misanthropic, social inadequate to joining an actual running club is something that requires background because as is common to all bloggers, I freakin' love banging on about myself, so - my relationship with organised physical activity begun 27 years ago thus:

Five-year-old me at my first PE lesson, (it was called games then) at my village school in a pair of green patterned shorts and, if I recall correctly, a Victoria Plum t-shirt and those marvellous black plimpsolls with the stretchy bit.  There was running, there was jumping, there were things involving skipping ropes, there was running while carrying things.  The distinct memory I have of it is trying, doing the same things that everyone else did, the same actions with the same effort but something wasn't right.  Everyone else's ball would travel metres before hitting the target, mine would trickle a little further on than my feet, everyone else would finish running without breaking a sweat and I would turn up half a minute later panting for breath, everyone else managed the skipping while I tripped over my rope and cried.

There is one reason and one reason alone for this, and that is physical ineptitude - a condition that afflicts the bookish among the population - or so I am led to believe. Or, do we become bookish because we need something to do rather than flailing around while people point and laugh? It's chicken and egg. Which came first? The books or the inability to participate in physical activity?

My ineptitude was and indeed is a bad thing because I am both highly competitive and a bad loser, not a good combination, but I did try at sport. My sister recalls a particularly amusing episode when for some reason I got put in the reserves for a school inter-house cross country competition which meant you still had to run but your time wasn't registered unless someone was injured and dropped out. All the other runners went past, obviously, then a couple of minutes later (well probably more than that) I came past sobbing and threatening to vomit. Dignified. This inability used to really bother me but after a while I resigned myself to being picked last for every single team and hitting the ball about twice in roughly 2,000 rounders matches.

I was pretty glad to kiss goodbye to such things when I reached the end of compulsory education. There is, of course, a problem with this in that you can turn into a right fatty if you don't  move around a bit at least once a week as you reach adulthood and hurtle past 30, particularly when you're in a country where it's too hot to move for a part of the year and getting a takeaway or eating out is cheaper and easier than cooking for yourself.

So, while 10 years ago I would have decked you if you had dared to suggest I would even consider joining a running club, I readily agreed to go along. And, it's not that bad.  In fact I would go as far as to say it is good. Very good.  So good that I don't even mind you seeing this picture:

Who is that idiot?  Jumping in the air (at only just gone 8am on a Friday, I might add) with something resembling vim and vigour as if she hadn't a care in the world?  What on earth is wrong with her? Why isn't she in a darkened room grumbling about anything and everything and pointing out that nearly everything on the planet is rubbish except her? 

The ineptitude has remained.  I do feel sorry for the personal trainers who are syndicated by Nike to train the terminally physically incapable like me. They have their work cut out but if they feel any frustration, they do not show it.  Luckily, there are some genuinely very good runners in the group and there are some good runners in the group, some above average runners and some average runners and some not that good runners. Unfortunately, all of them leave me in the dust and have already started on the sprint training or the situps and spidermans long before I rumble over the hill to the finish in a demented and exhausted fashion.  Yet, because you get presented with Nike gear for regular attendance, I am building a collection of t-shirts. So, I am to be seen, twice a week, shambling around in lycra, yes, lycra, in public, in the environs of Festival City and Burj Park with the hallowed big tick on my chest and something resembling a satisified smile, or more likely an exhausted grimace, on my face.

There is a small corner of my psyche that is slightly perturbed by the fact that despite my efforts, I am still the worst or nearly the worst in the group but I choose to be amused by this.  I persist because the running club is perfect for an impoverished hack like me as it's free due to the training being paid for by Nike. It's clearly unlikely that they are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and it's safe to say they get plenty of valuable publicity when they hand out free stuff and by people like me blogging about them. I'm not sure that I'm quite the sporty, healthy, wholesome type they have in mind when they design their sweat absorbing, stretchy, brightly coloured gear. On the other hand, perhaps I'm exactly the type. Let's face it, there are more like me - bile-filled inepts who shun daylight, positivity and physical activity where possible - than healthy sporty types on the planet. Wouldn't that be ironic? That my sporting inability has led me to become the precise target audience of a sportswear company?

Although I have hauled my sorry behind around charity races before - a 10km in the fairly pitiful time of 1 hour 12 minutes was my last effort - it's only since I joined the club that I became aware of some of the things I am doing wrong. I chose running as a way to try to get fitter or at least try to remain reasonably fit as I get older because it's a sport that you can do alone and that appeals to me. However, disappointingly, it turns out to be the case that having fellow runners and a mega-fit professional to encourage you does work and that it is true that doing proper stretching will mean you have fewer pulled muscles.  You have no idea how distressed I was when I finally had to admit that those are two true facts.

Meet one of the instructors, Tom: 

Now I've got that gratuitious picture out of the way, all I need to do is say if, like me, you are in Dubai and want to do some sport or physical activity but don't want to be humiliated or badgered or made to feel inadequate, Nike Running Club might just be for you. It meets at 6.45pm on Tuesdays outside the Nike store at Festival City, at 7.45am on a Friday at Burj Park and at 6.45am on a Saturday in JBR. No of course I haven't made it to the Saturday one yet.  What do you think I am? Some kind of sicko? Have a look here and click on Nike Run Club Dubai if you're interested in that one.

Bring on move 15 in 15 years...

I haven't updated in a while because of various things including a trip to Nepal, Christmas, and so on but plan to get back into the habit when I can.  Really must get round to uploading some of those elephant polo pictures.

Anyway, we've been content in this apartment for getting on for nine months now and had hoped to renew our tenancy in April, but alas, we find ourselves preparing to move once more. There are laws in Dubai introduced after the "good" times to protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords who imposed astronomical rent increases. In some ways the laws aren't necessary, particularly if you're just after a flat, as there is a glut available thanks to the out of control construction sector.

Unfortunately, these laws do not protect you from landlords who are total pillocks and living in cloud cuckoo land.  We could fight our case to stay here through various bodies but it would involve time and money which would be better spent finding a place with a landlord who is not a pillock.

Here is a letter that I wrote when it became apparent that we will be moving house again in April.  This will be the 15th time I've moved house since I left home to go to university in 1997 so you can imagine how utterly thrilled I am about this.  Don't worry, I didn't send it and I let the Sand Warlock handle most of the communication side as he is less inclined to lose his temper and start making biological suggestions to people he gets annoyed with.  It made me feel better though.

Dear Landlord

In response to your recent rent increase “suggestion”, we cannot afford to pay 125,000AED per annum rent. We are not sure why you would think we would choose to live in a 85,000AED per annum flat if we could afford 40,000 extra in rent so we are amazed that you would even suggest it. If our circumstances had changed to that effect in the course of the year, we would certainly have been looking for another flat with more space or putting some money aside for our future rather than blithely agreeing to pay 47 per cent extra rent for the same flat to line your pitiful pockets. What kind of morons do you think we are? We are not sure where you get the information that ‘rents are returning to what they were’ before Dubai’s widely publicised gargantuan economic crash but I suspect it was in some kind of psychedelic dream brought on by all the crack you have clearly been smoking.

There are many similar flats in the same area that are advertised at the same rent or a few thousand dirhams more than we are currently paying so we feel that you would be wasting your time trying to impose such a high a rent on a new tenant. Why would any new tenant rent this flat for 125,000 when they can get a similar one for 85,0000 to 90,000AED?

It is illegal in Dubai to raise the rent when a tenant has lived in a property for less than two years so why are you trying to do so? Surely as a landlord it is your responsibility to be aware of the law and adhere to it. If it is the case that you want to live in the property yourself, as you stated on your eviction notice AFTER telling us that you wanted to put the rent up by 40,000, then of course there is nothing that we can do about that and accept that we need to move out, you just need to be honest with us about it.  Why the subterfuge?

We have been good tenants taking good care of the property, giving our neighbours no cause whatsoever to complain and have made minimal contact with you during our tenancy and only when completely necessary. We are residential landlords with property in the UK and do not currently get as high a rent as we would like but we appreciate the value of good, reliable tenants as they inevitably save money in the long term because there are fewer missed payments and the need for repairs is less likely. It is a pity that you cannot do the same.

We will be moving out in April.  Please don’t expect us to listen to your feeble, piffling reasons for trying to impose this rent increase on us. We are only interested in hearing from you if you are agreeing to keep our rent at the same level. Otherwise we will be complying with the eviction notice which you issued when we failed to reply to an email within 24 hours. Considering how long it took you to respond to phone calls when we first moved into the flat and our fridge had broken that was quite frankly the last word in hypocrisy. I hope you are totally ashamed of yourself and your next tenant trashes the flat and never bothers to pay the rent, you total and complete idiotic scumbag.

**** you, you imbecilic plank-brained wankerish d*ckhead. I’ve met some morons in my time but you’ve won the award for the biggest ever.

Sincere congratulations and well done you!

Dubai Sand Witch

Queen of the desert

Some Canadians, some Germans, a Namibian, a Kiwi and another Englishwoman and I went on a dune bashing extravaganza in the desert on Friday. That's not even the start of an elaborate joke, we really did do that.

Here are some of the pictures to prove it. Let's start with the one where I helpfully took pictures while some of the rest of the group dug the vehicle of an inexperienced desert driver out of the sand after it got stuck.

 Then we arrived at Fossil Rock, up on the Sharjah border. It's quite a popular spot with dune buggy drivers, quad bikers and local dune bashers who zip around in 4X4s in various states of dilapidation.

Unfortunately I failed to get a close up of the lads in the above picture. They are in a battered four-wheel drive vehicle of some kind, sans numberplate, naturally, and had on traditional Arabic dress and gold rimmed Ray Ban glasses and nonchalantly shouted "Hi, how are you?", when they zoomed past us at a 45 degree angle spraying us with sand.

There's a feeling of cameraderie in the desert. We stopped to tow a Nissan Patrol belonging to a couple of local teens who had also got stuck.  Then, the less experienced desert driver managed to get his pickup wedged on a rock after he took a wrong turn (centre of pic below). He went up the slope, which as you can see is rather steep, and then rolled back on to the rock. Must have been a bit scary.

It was towed out of that particular hole by a much larger Toyota driven by more locals:

Another interesting sight was a desert village. Many were built in places where Bedouin used to camp.

Then we set up camp and ate a barbecue composed of many different meats. The Kiwi was in charge of that, obviously.

And there wasn't much to do but eat large amounts of meat, and sup a few cold ones, admire the view and watch the sun set. 

There was a lot of bandying about of advice about driving in the sand.

Here's some gems:

1. There's the letting your tyres down a bit to spread the load of the car to stop you sinking in. 
2. Drive in a wiggly way if you're following in the tracks of others, again, to avoid sinking in.
3. You should never go in just one vehicle as one might need to tow the other one out, or, if you're really stuck, give the others a lift in case you have to abandon it. 
4. Don't drive on the dunes in the dark because you might end up hitting someone coming the other way. Locals merrily ignored this advice.
5. Go in four-wheel drives. There was a lot of chat about the necessity of having a four-wheel drive and the inferiority or superiority of various makes and models. It was generally agreed that the Japanese makes are better.  Then, as we were leaving and pumping up the tyres before getting back on to the highway, what should fly past but a trio of saloon cars followed by a Toyota Yaris. How I chuckled. 

The biggest, the tallest, the most expensive....

This has proved to be the most popular page on my blog by a long, long way, so, in the spirit of giving the people what they want, I have decided to update it with new records when I hear about them.

If you're new to this particular corner of my blog, its purpose is to document Dubai superlatives, the biggest, the tallest, the most expensive, the widest, the fattest, the tastiest, the whatever. Dubai has them all.

The less kind commentators have said of this tendency to try to win accolades for the biggest and/or best shows that Dubai is an insecure place without culture or class that feels the need to win races and claim titles to draw attention to itself.  I could not possibly comment on that but here are some examples of the biggest/tallest/most expensive/only in Dubai.

1. The world's biggest shopping mall - Dubai Mall.

2. The world's tallest building - Burj Khalifa. This has held all kinds of world's highest records all of its own including world's highest swimming pool (now eclipsed by a Singapore hotel, I believe), world's highest bar/restaurant.

There have been claims that it is home to 3. The world's highest mosque but a story in The National makes a claim to the contrary. There's a can of worms that I'm not going to open as to why the rumour would start in the first place and if it indeed does exist, why it would need to be a secret.

4. World's single largest acrylic panel (certified by Guinness World Records and has a plaque and everything but developed rather alarming cracks and is partially covered by advertising hoarding) the Aquarium, Dubai Mall.

5. World's biggest ring which was displayed at the Gold Souk in Deira. No sniggering at the back.

6. World's most expensive handbag which was on display in Dubai earlier this year. Tasteful.

7. World's most expensive cocktail

8. World's only Seven Star Hotel, although how they measure such things when the ratings officially only go up to five stars, I'm not sure - Burj Al Arab.

Ace garden centre, Festival City, was briefly home to the most glamorous of all the tallest, longest, strongest, fastest records Dubai currently holds:

9. The world's largest garden spade.

Presumably, thanks to Kim Kardashian's recent visit to Dubai (October 2011), we can also claim to have a hand in: 10. The world's most embarrassingly contrived reality TV marriage.  What a claim to fame.

11. Thanks to a reader who reminded me that Dubai is home to the world's world's longest driverless Metro system.

12. The world's largest themed shopping mall in the form of the explorer-themed Ibn Battuta Mall. I must confess I have not visited it yet. I am clearly missing out.

13. The world's most expensive cupcake.

14. The world's biggest book, which has been on display at The Dubai Mall, entitled This is Muhammed. 

15. The world's first indoor black run at Ski Dubai, the Mall of the Emirates. 

16. The world's largest natural flower garden, Miracle Garden, which opened earlier this year.

Please leave a comment on the blog or contact me via facebook, if you are one of my chums, if you hear of any more Dubai records. The more ridiculous the better.

Please don't shout at me, I'm NEW

I was wondering through Dubai Mall the other day and I spotted 'Please don't shout at me, I'm NEW' emblazoned on the back of the shirt of a lady who was walking in front of me. I didn't see which shop she worked at and I'm ashamed to say I chuckled when I saw this before feeling a pang of sympathy for the lady who has to have this pointed out on her shirt to stop her getting the hairdryer treatment.

It speaks volumes about the attitude that some people can have to customer service in Dubai, that people have to be told not to go mental.

Most people will have witnessed some restaurant or shop staff member having an absolute strip torn off them by a customer at some point in their time in Dubai. The wages can be extremely low and seeing some usually comparatively well off person holding forth about some minor issue, threateneing to have them sacked or whatever, is pretty unedifying.

Don't get me wrong, the customer service can be appalling and I've very nearly lost it on a few occasions, mainly in instances when people feel free to waste your time. The main problem I find is that staff will tell you what you think you want to hear: "Ie, is my photo print ready?" "Yes, Ma'am." "Shall I come in today?" "Yes Ma'am" then you arrive to find that it is in fact not ready, come back in three days but the shop worker was afraid of upsetting you by saying no it wasn't. This sounds fairly minor but when it happens again and again in various forms, it can be immensely frustrating. They've dispensed with the problematic customer on the phone for the present and will worry about the problem when you are actually in the store face to face, complaining that your photo is not ready. Hopefully you won't come and pick up your photo for several days by which time it will be ready.  You learn pretty quick that when people say they're going to do something 'today' in Dubai they mean tomorrow or possibly next week.

People do expect much higher standards of customer service in the UAE and they don't always get it for reasons mentioned above, hence shouting in stores and restaurants being fairly routine. I tried to imagine what the lady's shirt would have had printed on it if she worked in a UK store:

"Dear customer, I am new to the store, please be so kind as to be patient while I am learning to be a full member of the team" or some such corporate bumpf rather than the pleading Please don't shout at me.  Answers on a postcard, which will take three months to reach me because the postal service seems to be run by one bloke in an empty warehouse in Jebel Ali.    

In other news, the Khaleej Times is reporting that ex-pats in the Emirates will have to present their Emirates ID card to get their transactions finalised (whatever that should mean) from June 1, 2012 onwards.  Who wants a bet that this will be pushed back?

Conversation curently typical of my every day working life

ARTISTIC PICTURE-FOCUSED GRAPHIC DESIGN-TYPE BLOKE: Sand Witch, this review of the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupé Black Series (that you've never even seen, let alone driven, but never mind that, that's another story) that you've written, it's called the Black Series but in all the pictures you've sent, it's bright red.

ME: Yes, that confused me, too, but I assumed it was just one of those odd car things. Calling the car black when it is in fact red. I know nothing about cars, do you? In normal circs I would ask the PR to make sure we had the correct images but PRs in this country, particularly in the luxury industry, seem to take pleasure in being total numpties who could not find their arses to scratch them, let alone give you correct information. With apologies if you have friends who work in PR.

ADP-FG-TB: I have several friends who work in PR who could talk shite for England. I don't know much about cars. I can't even drive.  Black but red? Weird eh?

ME: *Hysterical laughter*  

Identify yourself

We're an innovative bunch in the UAE and we like to forge ahead with schemes that others have cast aside as a massive waste of money. By which I mean, at a mystical or mythical point in the future, residents of the UAE are going to be required to carry an Emirates ID card. This move has been in the pipeline for years but the deadlines for when it's going to become mandatory to carry one keep being moved back... and back... and back...

I know plenty of people in the Emirate of Dubai aren't bothering to get them because they think by the time the law is brought in making them mandatory, they'll be long gone, on to their next ex-pat assignment in a country, far, far away, or home to the motherland.  People are not super keen on the authorities having yet more documentation on them, including detailed fingerprints. We're a data protection sensitive bunch, us ex-pats, but no such laws exist to protect us in the UAE. 

Him indoors was made to get one by his company, presumably because they're a wee bit government owned so they're a bit stricter about such things.  I decided I may as well get one too because, frankly, I got the fear.  From the middle of last month, in neighbouring Abu Dhabi, they made it mandatory to have at least applied for your ID card if you wanted to renew your visa. I think such is the volume of people still entering Dubai, even post financial crash, it would be a nightmare to require such a thing as the backlogs would be horrendous, but it wouldn't surprise me if something similar came into force here. In addition, in future, Abu Dhabians will present their ID cards to receive medical treatment rather than carrying a separate medical insurance card.  It strikes me that if they make similar moves here, renewing your visa or obtaining medical treatment without the wretched card could be a right pain in the arse, particularly if there's a backlog of applications.

So, we applied for my card last month by filling in a form and taking my passport to a typing centre where they fill in the Arabic documents for you.  Then yesterday I went to the Department of Naturalisation and Residency to get my fingerprints done.  I haven't taken a picture of the department because it's forbidden to take pictures of government buildings but it's an odd looking low rise place on the side of Sheikh Zayed Road which looks a bit like a 1970s idea of a building of the future, ie, it's covered in gleaming silver panels. It's also a bizarre combination of the old and new Dubai.  Inside, there is a Gloria Jean's Coffee, symbolic of how Dubai, like everywhere else in the world, is overtaken by the desire to drink bucket-sized paper cups of sub-standard milk-based caffeine drinks and eat muffins the size of their heads, but outside there are little typing and photocopying centres in shack-like buildings as well as a "cafeteria".  A cafeteria in Dubai is basically a kebab or shwarma shack which also sells soft drinks or juices and various other fried items that can be wrapped up in pitta bread.   

I trooped into the main building looked around for a sign as I was promised by the slightly helpful man I had previously phoned to ask for directions. None to be had. So I asked the policeman sitting at the desk who directed me back out to the overflow building which had sinister signs including "investigative services, blacklisted visas, visa bans" etc.  I went and sat down in the women's only section of said building surrounded by forlorn looking blacklisted women from South Asia or the Philippines who had apparently come to plead their cases. 

It soon became apparent that I was in the wrong place when I asked one of the Emirati officials who had a sign saying "bank" in front of her, presumably because she was the one that collected the money for visa fees, she said: "Go back inside". Did she know where the correct office was? Er, no. Why would she? She only works there after all.

So I went back inside and asked a policeman at a different desk who sent me to the right place, another women only desk.  I took a ticket (they love that here, ticket taking, reminds me of a 1980s UK supermarket).  The woman doing the fingerprinting and photographs ambled off for an extended coffee break straight after I sat down so I looked up at the various widescreen televisions suspended from the ceilings for entertainment.  It's safe to say that the loop video of Sheikh Mohammed being shown round the spanking new Emirates ID facility got old pretty quick.

After the fingerprinting on a clever lasery looking panel thing, I was told I would receive a text message within a month to go and pick the Emirates ID card up from a post office. Which post office? Who knows? Why post office instead of sent directly to me? It's a mystery.  One more of the wonderful mysteries of the Emirates.