The Last Telegraph. Stop.

Major telegraph lines in 1891 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today there is actually less chatter in the world. The last telegraph has been sent and now the old machines are officially museum pieces. The last message over a telegraph network was sent by Indian state operator BNSL - Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd - from Pune's telegraph office, in fact Saturday saw something of a rush for the outmoded service, with something like 150 telegrams commemorating the end of a service that has been connecting the world for 160 years.

Although Samuel Morse gets all the credit (his telegraph was patented in 1847), there were a number of pioneers developing wireline communications systems - it was Morse, fuelled by having missed his wife's death as the message she was ill came too late, who defined the telegraph and whose famous code allowed the first telegram to be send in 1938.

The story was carried last month by Business Insider, where I stumbled upon it and took it along with me to Dubai Eye radio. The National's done quite a nice piece on it today.

As I've mentioned before, the UAE has its own little piece of telegraph history, with Musandam's Telegraph Island, a tiny islet in an inlet out by the Straits of Hormuz in what is apparently called the Elphinstone Inlet. The telegraph station there was built in the 1860s, but was only actually occupied and in use for two years or so around 1865-1868, before the cable was re-routed.

Apparently in that time, two men were lost to the appalling heat - the legend is the island is the origin of the phrase 'going round the bend' because the hapless, over-heated Brits would go potty waiting for the next supply ship. A gunboat had to be maintained for the safety of the crew on the island, apparently, because of the 'piratical nature' of the locals. As the excellent 'The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf' by HH Dr Sheikh Sultan Al Qassimi points out, they were a feisty lot back in the day.

The cable, part of the London-Karachi link, meant that a message could travel from London to India in just five days. Advances in technology meant that just seventy years later, a man could fly from London to Sharjah in just four days.

How we move on, eh?

A Matter Of Form

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I was talking the other day about Sharjah announcing online tenancy contract renewal, the dream yet to be realised. There's a slew of announcements doing the rounds these days following Sheikh Mohammad's clarion call for e-government to take to mobile and everyone's busily trying to show they're working on m-government. Today, for instance, the Emirates ID Authority is to be seen in Gulf News demonstrating near field technology and pre-announcing ID card renewal via mobile apps by the end of the year.

Let's revisit that one just before Christmas for some reality checking, hey?

It's a major cultural change for the Emirates, all this online documentation stuff. It's counter-cultural to a huge degree. We're used to the good old ways and they are very analogue ways indeed. The generally accepted procedure is to require huge amounts of documentation to be produced in order to complete the simplest transaction and to insist on that transaction being carried out in person. It is mandatory to neglect to tell the applicant (or, more properly, supplicant) which documentation is required. When the applicant arrives hefting a huge wodge of paperwork, the concerned employee of the given department will unpick any staples attaching these documents together and re-staple the documents in a different order. He will then sigh and point out that the applicant has not remembered to bring the copy of an attested marriage certificate, birth certificate of his spouse and a copy of the frontispiece to the Faber 1932 edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

If, frustratingly, the applicant has all required papers and clearly has a copy of a wombat owner's license from the Saskatchewan state licensing authority, the employee of the concerned department will press the clear window worn in an otherwise grubby touchscreen and a small printed slip with an impossibly high number will be handed to the supplicant applicant. The applicant will be referred to at all times as a customer, including on the slip with the number.

The supplicant applicant customer can now wait in comfort as the impossibly low numbers on the screen count up towards the lofty heights of the number clutched in his hand. I've taken to bringing my Kindle with me, which does rather help.

In the good old days you had to take everything to a typing centre for them to type an application form for you, but in these days of e-government, we have the option of filling in the form online before printing it out and bringing it with us to make our application supplication customer service experience. The concept that scans of the required documents could be included in the online process, perhaps also payment of the releavant tax fee made is not really up for consideration - much less that the documentation could be digital from the get-go and available by cross-linking databases. Oh no, couldn't have that, could we?

And so I went to have our renewed tenancy contract attested today, carrying with me every possible document under the sun. I kid you not. I have long experience with this process - I've been doing it for something like twenty years now and can never once remember managing to have everything they've asked for first time around. I had tenancy contracts, passport copies, attested marriage certificates, copy of the landlord's ownership document, copy of the landlord's passport. I was equipped for an all-out war of attrition and I was going to win this one, baby.

Do you have this letter? Sighed the employee of the concerned department. What letter? This one. You have to have your landlord sign it and then you sign it. It says you won't build extra rooms in your villa and house more families. No, of course I don't, I've never heard of that letter until now. Regretful shrug (which I swear is a government employee's grin of triumph). You have to have it before I'll give you a number.

Sure, I can't wait for the process to go online. But I rather suspect it'll be a case of filling in the form online and printing it to make my application supplication customer service experience in person. They won't forego the pleasure of thinking up some new insane requirement to trip me up with. I can only wonder what they'll think up for next year. Meanwhile, I'm on eBay looking up old editions of The Complete Works of Shakespeare...

The End Of The Road For Sharjah's Airport Runway?

Al Ittihad Square (Photo credit: kathrin_gaisser)

News continues to come out regarding what appears to be a massive reworking of the centre of Sharjah around the Souq Al Markazi (Blue souk to you), 'Smile You're In Sharjah' roundabout and Ittihad Square areas. Today's Gulf News carries the announcement of a new Sharjah central transport station, which appears to move the existing bus station over Arouba Street to sit adjacent to the King Faisal mosque, making room for the big new junction that's planned. That junction appears as if it will see an end to the cheery 'Smile You're In Sharjah' floral messages that have greeted visitors to the Cultural Emirate for so long - I posted about that here.

But the model illustrating Gulf News' piece on the new transport hub would appear to show another passing - that of the remnants of the old Sharjah airport runway. It's a little known fact, but when you drive past the King Faisal Mosque from Mahatta Fort towards 'Smile You're In Sharjah', the slightly odd, bumpy road surface is in fact not a road surface at all, but the end of the old airport runway. Formerly the site of RAF Sharjah and then Sharjah International Airport until the opening of the new airport on the Dhaid road in 1977, the old Mahatta Fort (retaining the airport's original conning tower) is now an aviation museum - and the the oddly straight street S116 runs down the former runway, which becomes the road surface once you're past the lights by the King Faisal Mosque.

The new road network will replace that piece of street, according to the model in the photo. But thankfully Mahattah itself has been preserved, a fascinating aviation museum that's well worth a weekend visit. If you're quick, you can drive along the old runway, too!

Electronic Tenancy Contracts. Whoopeedoo.

Contracts (Photo credit: NobMouse)

So Sharjah is talking about online electronic tenancy contracts. This is a good thing, albeit the cynically minded might point out it's coming a bit late in the day. We can only hope it won't be the usual laughing implementation of 'fill out the e-form, print it out and then bring it to us with all the necessary documents' so beloved of the Gulf e-government sites.

The way it works here in the UAE is that you have an annual tenancy contract (unless you've 'bought' a house here) and this needs to be ratified by the municipality otherwise it's not considered a legal contract. If you've heard of the shenanigans between landlords and tenants I have over the past brace of decades, you'd want that contract in place.

In order to do this, you have to take the Arabic language contract, duly signed and stamped by all concerned, your passport copy, a copy of the landlord's ownership certificate, your marriage certificate (just so's they know you're not a bachelor living in a family area) and your up to date electricity and water bill and any other paperwork they decide on the day is required (so you take every possible form of paperwork in the world) to the Municipality, where you join the shuffling hordes in jostling to get a ticket from the paperwork checker before sitting down and waiting for your number to come up. When this eventually happens, you wait for the nice Emirati lady to tip tip tap for a while, hand over 2% of the rental (this is a fee, you understand, not a tax) and Robert's yer father's brother.

Moving this online makes so much sense it's not true. Upload some scans, pay by Visa and what is currently at least a two-hour face to face shuffling unpleasantness becomes a ten minute online administrative task.

It's actually so simple, the question isn't so much when they're going to do it as it is why it wasn't done years ago. Ironically, I am now off to the Municipality to get my tenancy attested - hopefully for the last time!

Sharjah - Radar Down

(Photo credit: brizzle born and bred)

As eagle eyed observers will recall from earlier posts, Sharjah has been suffering from a mysterious and expensive spate of radar shootings.

Someone has been regularly taking out the traffic radars on the Mileiha Road - the arterial route that leads from the notorious National Paints parkabout all the way out to the delightful East Coast littoral of Khor Kalba across on the other side of the Hajjar Mountains. It's a delightful drive, BTW - and you can pop across the border to Fujeirah for a bite to eat for lunch before coming back, say, over the Masafi/Dhaid road.

This morning's drive to work took me along the road from Sharjah Airport to junction 2 on the aforementioned Road To Mileiha. That connecting road contains, among many other things (including a co-op and loads of huge palatial villas) two radars.

Standing by the second one was a copper and a couple of puzzled looking blokes. The radar on the northern carriageway (one of the expensive new models) had been pretty comprehensively smashed. If that was a bullet, it presumably means the perp's still at it. Now all we've got to wait for is Gulf News rehashing that quote they use every time they report on a new radar 'kill':

“We are collecting evidence from the spot and will soon nab the person who committed the crime. We will find out what motivated him to commit such a crime.” He goes on to add, “The person responsible for shooting the radar will be arrested soon. “He will be punished according to the UAE law.”

It's no laughing matter for Sharjah's finest, by the way - that's now a total of 15 radars ruined and, at Dhs250,000 apiece, we're talking about almost four million Dirhams. To give it a sense of perspective, that's almost four days' revenue from the RTA's Sharjah-bound Salik gates!!!

When they catch him, the radar shootist is undoubtedly in for the high jump in no small way!

The Cost Of Being An Expat

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First things first: I'm not complaining. We've lived here a long time because we like it here. I won't bore you with all our 'reasons to be cheerful' but suffice to say they are legion.

But there's a report in today's Gulf News, which talks about how 60% of young Emiratis surveyed are apprehensive but not frightened of the UAE's overwhelmingly expat demographic - 85% of the overall population here is expat - it's higher in Dubai, which is 90% expat.

That's nothing new. The UAE population has been numerically dominated by its expat workforce since the year dot.

Buried deep in GN's long analysis of why this is really good news for everyone is an interesting figure, though. According to a certain Dr. N. Janardhan, the average expat makes a contribution to the state of Dhs 2,507 while the state invests Dhs 14,066 a year in each expat.

I'm afraid I rather screeched to a halt. I'm sure Dr Janardhan's figures are skewed by the preponderance of the UAE's labourers, but I can tell you that I for one am paying a great deal more than Dhs 2,507 in fees and taxes. And yes, I know the UAE's tax free, but when you charge a fee as a percentage of a transaction, for instance the tenancy contract registration fee, calling it a fee is really just obfuscation.

I got to Dhs 8,000 pretty easily and hadn't even started down the road of the cost of power here (which is significantly more than in the UK, despite the fact this is an oil producing country, because the expats subsidise the Emiratis). Try as I might, I couldn't work out where the Dhs 14,066 comes from, because you pays for what you gets here, from healthcare to transportation.

It started me wondering what the cost vs economic contribution would be for yer average expat. In short, what's our ROI?

What? No Smile You're In Sharjah?

Sharjah's famous 'Smile You're In Sharjah' roundabout is soon to be no more - a Dhs1 billion upgrade to the 'Al Jubail Intersection' is going to replace the current roundabout and it's clear from drawings released by Sharjah's public works department that the new roundabout, a combination of cloverleaf and swingabout (it is SO a proper word) will obliterate the flowery imprecation that has gladdened so many hearts over the decades. The drawing above was sourced by Gulf News from consultant WSP Middle East, which has proposed the scheme to ease the traffic issues that have dogged the roundabout in busy times.

The news also carries with it the prospect of some gnarly short term traffic issues - the roundabout serves Sharjah's central bus station and also intersects one of the two arterial roads that feed the city - Al Arouba Street. Although the long term effects of the upgrade are undoubtedly going to be positive, the short term holds nothing but snarling traffic jams and diversions. With the Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road currently in a state of some considerable upheaval due to the roadworks around National Paints (not completed on April 15th as previously, insanely, predicted), that only really leaves the already packed Al Wahda Street. Things are going to get pretty dicey around here, trust me.

Whether we'll keep some floral version of the cheery 'Smile You're Insane' oops sorry, I meant 'Smile You're In Sharjah' when all that newness is completed is unclear. The journalists, as usual, didn't ask anyone the one question that mattered in the whole thing...

Sharjah Salik Gates. Dubai's Hundred Million Dollar Baby

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in 2007, when Dubai's Salik road toll was first talked about, there were rumblings and mumblings that the Al Ittihad road linking Dubai and Sharjah would be one of the locations for toll gates. The feared gate didn't materialise at the time. In fact, Dubai's Road and Transport Authority was at pains to dampen speculation regarding a 'phase two' which meant, of course, that phase two was just around the corner.

When it came, phase two added a gate to the Sheikh Zayed Road and one to Maktoum Bridge. Both of these, as the original gates, were avoidable, but only by taking a more roundabout route. In fact the RTA, which likes to trumpet its green credentials (even going so far as to award a silver-plated cow's aorta for sustainable transport), has created a system of tolls that lengthens thousands of commuters' journeys each day by taking the most direct route.

And so it is with the new gates, which set the extraordinary precedent of taxing travel between two emirates. You'll be able to make a tax-free Sharjah/Dubai journey by travelling out to the E311 (The Road Formerly Known As The Emirates Road), a significantly longer drive than the Ittihad road. This is predicated on the vast road improvement scheme currently underway on the E311, which upgrades the junctions leading up to the infamous National Paints Roundabout and is intended to remove the bottleneck at National Paints. This is scheduled, we are told, for completion in April. I'll be delighted if it is, but looking at the current state of National Paints I simply can't see it happening.

What will happen if the changes to National Paints aren't ready or, worse, turn out not to work? Will the RTA go ahead, turn on Salik on April 15 (the announced 'go live' date) and create massive, snarling jams on a road already comprehensively choked by the large volume of inter-emirate traffic it carries? The move will certainly put huge pressure on a brand new road network in a known and notorious traffic hotspot. But then it's Sharjah's problem, isn't it? Dubai won't care, it'll be too busy counting the proceeds.

Back when it was launched, Salik was meant to raise Dhs600 million a year in fees according to 'traffic expert' and chairman of the RTA, Mattar Al Tayer. It's consistently whizzed past those targets, raising a stunning Dhs669 million in 2008 and 776 million in 2009. Media reports in 2011 told of Salik being used to underpin securitised loans of Dhs 2.93 billion based on its revenues to 2015. Apart from that, we have seen few up to date figures on Salik revenues - but a four year loan of Dhs2.93 billion would be about consistent with 2009 revenues - a tad over Dhs730 million a year. There's no doubt, whatever its impact on traffic has been, it has been an amazing success financially.

Now, with the Ittihad road carrying some 260,000 vehicles a day, an amazing number but one that comes straight from the horse's mouth, the RTA can look forward to raising a cool million dirhams a day or a hundred million dollars a year. According to the RTA itself, the whole scheme is intended to divert some 1500 vehicles per day to the E311 or E611 Dubai Bypass Road. I can see a lot more than 1,500 people choosing to take the long way round to avoid paying Dhs8 per day. Most people around here would buy and sell you for a Dirham.

That's effectively a hundred million dollar tax on travel to and from Sharjah. Neat.

It also means you're paying Dhs28 straight away to any taxi to take you to Dubai before the meter starts ticking and Dhs36 if you cross any of the 'internal' Salik gates. When I first came here, you could get a cab to Chicago Beach from Sharjah for Dhs25. Ah, me, but those were the days, eh?

Sharjah's Big Bus Tour. An Odd Little Thing...

London bus - London eye (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

So a friend has her mum out for a couple of weeks, right? And she decides to take her on the Big Bus Tour of Sharjah (only it's not called that, it's called something else. But you know what I mean). So she nips down to that most classic of Sharjah hotels, The Coral Beach, and she asks 'em if they've got any information on the big bus tour thingy.

She was given a piece of paper with, her words, my face on it.

Disconcerting stuff, eh? In fact she was given a printout of this here post I did on the City Sightseeing Tour of Sharjah. Being one of the few people in the world who don't avidly log in every day to see what half-thought I've jotted down and flung at the wall of this very blog - in fact, being unaware that I even had a blog - she found the whole experience bordering on the alarming.

I think it's quite charming, really. The post wasn't by any means a gushy endorsement of the tour - in fact I went to some length to point out the things it should encompass but in fact misses out. And yet that's what they're using to promote the gig.

I'm thinking of a book now. 101 uses for a marginal blog...

Life In The Sharjah Lane

The above is a little present for any of you in the UK right now, thawing out from last week's cold snap, surrounded by drizzle and grey lumps of hardened snow. It's the view up from my sun lounger at the poolside of the Radisson Sharjah this weekend. No, no, don't thank me. It's fine. All part of the service. You're welcome.

Sarah's working in Dubai at the moment which means we're doing the hop across the border to work - border rats both. We had a quick chat over the weekend (while lying on those sun loungers, natch) about whether we want to move to live in Dubai and the answer remains an emphatic no.

Sharjah's not as 'sophisticated' as Dubai. We don't have organic markets and our smattering of smaller shopping malls lack the glitz and glamour of the World's Greatest Malls. There aren't world class restaurants around every corner or phalanxes of five star hotels lining every street. But that's okay.

There are souks and backstreet stores, little haberdashery shops and stalls selling mad plastic stuff alongside bolts of cloth and hairclips. There are poor stores that sell dried loomi, loofahs and sacks of spices and herbal remedies. There's the cloth souk with its dazzling shop windows interspersed with rickety little tailors' shops, a tiny area of goldsmiths nestled in its core. And, of course, the Blue Souk (or Souk Al Markazi to give its proper name), perfume souk, vegetable souk, animal souk and fish market. These remain distinctively organic places, alive and human rather than planned and polished. There are museums and art galleries.

They're excavating the car park behind the fort in 'Bourj', where you can see the traceries and lines of coral buildings. It looks like the already extensive heritage area is about to get even bigger. It's a lovely area to walk in this time of year. Now they've moved the dhow wharfage to the other side of the creek, I think the 'Irani souk', one of the last surviving (every Emirate had an 'Irani souk' where the dhows would hove to from Iran and sell their wares - the souks became solidified, rather in the way 'speedbump communities' like the Masafi Friday Market do) will dissipate.

We went wandering in the hardware souk. Madness. Most entertaining. It's been a while since we last did that.

Sharjah suits us just fine, thanks...


 

Sharjah Bus Tour Fun

P London bus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sharjah's Investment and Development Authority, Shurooq, has introduced 'Big Bus' style bus tours to the Emirate, the City Sightseeing Sharjah buess.

Which is sort of cool.

Now I can see you snarky Dubai types quipping, "What, one stop, is it?" and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Three double-decker London buses will duly ply their route, stopping at such landmarks (according to Gulf News today) as Al Majaz, Buheira, Al Qasba, the aquarium, the fish market, the restoration area and, bizarrely, Mega Mall.

I first came across Big Bus tours in London, where twenty quid gave you an, all-day, all-sights experience, with plenty buses zooming around so you never really had to wait long for one to come along and whisk you to the next destination. Similarly Paris, where we did the same thing. It's a brilliant way to get around a city. I've never been quite sad enough to take the Big Bus tour of Dubai - nothing against the tour, but I can drive, thanks. Germaine Greer did and used the deep experience and insight it brought her to pen a 1200-word slagging piece in the Guardian about how horrible it all is.

Sharjah's tour buses are priced at Dhs85 for adults and 45 for kids, which is a wee bit hefty, if you don't mind me saying so. And, if Gulf News is to be believed, the buses miss some key destinations, too - what about the archaeological and science museum, book roundabout (and its cultural centre) or the classic car museum, the discovery centre and the children's museum? Let alone the stunning Sharjah desert park, which is home to the natural history museum, the botanical museum and, of course, the desert wildlife park itself, which is an absolute must visit for any tourist or expat living here. Then there's the Mahatta Museum, the site of the old Imperial Airways landing strip in central Sharjah restored to its former glory - and, like many of the restoration areas in Sharjah, beautifully done.

There's actually loads to see and do in Sharjah, folks - for those of you that have never travelled North to The Wastelands. The Sharjah museums website has some great ideas for a family day out and it's linked here.  Take a City Sightseeing bus one Friday while the weather's still nice!

I think it's a great idea.

Stormy Seas In Sharjah

Overcast, grey skies and a huge swell coming up on the beach down the road flooding the beach - invariably resulting in crowds of people wandering around, photographing each other and generally enjoying the sight of the waves crashing into the shore. No picnics today as you can see, but toddlers in bobble hats splishing around in the big puddles and general pandemonium on the corniche road as everyone slows down to have a peer at the rolling white-caps, their rising faces mottled with the brown sand they're pulling up. There are cars everywhere, slowing, stopping, parking and pulling out. It's only going to be a matter of time before there's an occlusion of some sort and then the police'll be out, blocking the u-turns and trying to stem the tide of curious humanity hankering back to the sea geneticists tell us we all came from...

I do wonder if the usual ship will run aground, which would rather complete the scene.

Sharjah Water Disruption - A Lesson In Communication?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many, many years ago I was on a business trip to Austria when some loon or another decided to dump a dhow-load of dead cows into the Gulf off Sharjah. The resulting flotsam got caught up in the intake of Sharjah's main desalination plant, causing a shutdown and an Emirate-wide water shortage.

I arrived back clutching a couple of bottles of nice German sekt to find our water tanks draining fast. Soon enough, we'd run dry. Three increasingly dirty days later I decided enough was enough and popped to our local 'cold store' where I bought several cases of Masafi. These filled the bath quite nicely, thank you, and we popped a bottle of cold sekt and enjoyed a little taste of the life everyone at home believes for some reason we live every day - we bathed in spring water and drank champagne.

I'd better get the bubbly in, because it's all apparently set to happen again. Khaleej Times broke the story three days ago (Gulf News ran it as a NIB today) - from next week (November 28th to be precise), Sharjah's main desalination plant at Al Layyah will undergo maintenance with six days of 'disruption' to the water supply. Interestingly, the GN story refers to a message  circulated to residents by SEWA (The Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority), which is news to me. It also refers to the 'Al Liya desalination plant', which is one of those problems we face with place names here - the Al Layyah plant, Sharjah's central power station and desalination plant, is located in the Al Layyah area, near Sharjah port. It's also the main centre for bottling Sharjah's Zulal branded water (although there's a new plant in Dhaid which bottles groundwater, thereby confusing anyone who wonders if Zulal is desalinated water or spring water. It's actually both, it would seem!).

Al Layyah is one of (as far as I can find out) four desalination plants in Sharjah - there are also plants in Khor Fakkan, Kalba and Hamriya. The GN piece refers to disruption in "Al Khan, Al Majaz, the Corniche, Khalid Lagoon and other areas", which is typically - and infuriatingly, obtuse. What are those 'other areas'? If last time is anything to go by, pretty much all of Sharjah. Why didn't the papers think to question the announcement and get better quality information into our hands? This type of question is the route to madness, of course. The answer is 'because'.

Of course, the best thing to do is go to SEWA's website which will have all the information concerned consumers will need, won't it? No, of course it won't. It'll have a piece on how SEWA has, apparently, briefed Credit Suisse on its future expansion plans. While I am pleased for both Credit Suisse and SEWA, it's not the information I'm after. The delightfully 1990s retro feel website contains absolutely no reference to the 'planned disruption' at all, in fact.

So all we know is there is to be  'planned disruption', that supply will not be cut off but that we are being urged to stockpile water while we can. Oh, and that "after the completion of the work, water supply would be better than before."

We are all mushrooms.

Update - I didn't think of this at the time of this post, but Sarah did. Of all the times in the year to pick for this 'scheduled disruption', they've picked National Day weekend, a holiday weekend when load on the system is going to go through the roof. Nice...

@WeAreUAE

The Flag of the UAE (shown as artistically waving) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've sort of been too busy with book posts over the long weekend to tell you, but the lovely people behind the co-curated '@WeAreUAE' Twitter account had a massive brain fit and lapse in judgement and handed the account over to me on late Wednesday night, lock stock and barrel. They even bust out with an Instagram account! It's mine, all mine precioussss, until next Wednesday!

What is @WeAreUAE? The idea is that someone new tweets from the account each week, opening up a kaleidoscope of different viewpoints, experiences and voices from the people who inhabit a given country. One of the world's more famous co-curated national Twitter accounts was @Sweden, which popped into instant notoriety when curator Sonja Abrahamsson used the account to ask a number of questions about what a Jew was. The questions were, as the New Yorker pointed out in its piece on her tenure, not so much anti-Semitic as childlike and born out of genuine curiosity. Nevertheless, she caused a storm that saw @Sweden draw followers like a follower drawing thing. Rather wonderfully, the Swedish Institute, one of the bodies behind the account, pointed out that Sonja was merely exercising the right to free speech that characterised Sweden - and apparently many of the people who arrived, drawn to the controversy, found Sonja actually quite charming and endearingly kooky.

I'm already having great fun with it all - and just in case you're waiting for me to do a Sonja, I'm actually taking the opportunity to celebrate the many things I enjoy and treasure about the country I have called home for the past  19 years.

See you at @WeAreUAE!

Rule 118

Mini-ature Parking Space (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rule one: Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!
Lu Tze

The traffic laws of Sharjah are legion and best among them is Rule 118, which states that it is illegal to part with your car reversed into the parking space. All parked cars must be placed backsides out to the road. Headlights must not be presented to passing traffic. You go in frontwards, in other words.

Today's papers carry the news, without even cracking a smile, that such seditious behaviour will result in a Dhs200 fine and three black points slapped on the offender's license. That's out of a total of 24, rather than the UK's stricter 12, so you can park backwards a few times before you lose your license.

Khaleej Times quotes Col. Ahmed bin Darwish, Director of Traffic and Patrols at the Sharjah Police, saying, “Drivers have to park their vehicles in the same way they are told to do while in driving schools. Street parking is not designed for reverse parking and those doing it cause inconvenience to other road users and the traffic in general as the driver has to first drive and then come backward while other cars on the road wait all the time.”

The move is part of a campaign to curb 'parking space abuse', we are told...

Hands Off Sharjah!

Cultural Palace, Sharjah (Photo credit: gordontour)

Friends from Dubai made The Great Journey North and visited us many, many years ago. Arriving, they amusedly reported their eldest daughter's reaction as they crossed the border into Mordor, leaving behind the wonders of Dubai - "Oh, but Daddy, Sharjah's so very dirty!"

Years later she came to intern for me and I actually forgot to make her suffer. I'll get her next time.

Why is it that the people of Dubai so dismiss The Cultured Emirate? What is it quite that makes them look down their noses at their neighbours? This was brought to mind the other day when someone on an  expat forum kindly linked to this blog. A person was new to the UAE and was asking about Sharjah - oh, the outpouring of denigration and disgust!

Sharjah is just like Saudi, it's backward, it lacks the facilities and finesse of Dubai - on and on they go. I've lived there for nigh on twenty years now and can't say I've ever found the need to 'move to civilisation'. Not for us life in the noise of the approach to Dubai International or the power cuts and parking space denial of vengeful developers. Sharjah has long been home and there's nothing wrong with it. Sure, it's not Croydon (The Telegraph, many years ago, memorably and sniffily dubbed Jumeirah 'The Croydon of the Middle East') but then we never signed up to live in Croydon. It's the fact Sharjah is foreign makes it more fun to live in.

What about the hooch? You can drink at home or go to The Wanderers Club. What about the traffic? We drive around it. What about the strictness? It's more than balanced by tolerance. And you might like to consider how many 'banged up boozy Brit' stories have graced The Sun from Sharjah in recent years - the answer's none.

And if we want gleaming marble-floored shopping malls packed with cookie-cutter global brand chainstores, over-priced restaurants in fake souks and 'lifestyle walks', we know where we can find 'em - conveniently down the road so we can visit when we want but don't have to live with 'em on our doorstep.

Here's to Sharjah and all that's in it!

Dumpster Divers Done

International Recycling Symbol  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The United Arab Emirates sits smack bang on the socio-cultural tectonic plate that divides the east and west of humanity. With remarkable ethnic and nationalistic diversity, it's home to people of all faiths, shades, backgrounds and origins. We come from around the world to live here for one reason and one reason only.

We're all better off here.

That's as true of you and me as it is of labourers and housemaids. It's one reason why the crime rate here is so unbelievably low - we're all on the hog's back and wouldn't risk our privileged position just to pick a few pockets or steal money from someone's car. Other reasons include, it must be said, a draconian judicial system. I've seen the cells (from the oustide, thankfully) and stumbling lines of prisoners in leg gyves. You don't want to be there.

But better off is relative. My better off is a great deal more clover-lined than, for instance, an uneducated man from the Swat Valley or the Bangladeshi flood plains. For them, better off would be something simple like a decent billet, regular food, the absence of constant fear and a few dollars to send home every month. In fact, there are people here whose 'better off' is combing the rubbish bins in the streets for cardboard, tin cans and even plastic. They sell these to recycling companies. You'll often see chaps pedalling along with a great stack of cartons bungied to the back of their black-framed Chinese pushbikes.

Well, they're a thing of the past now. Sharjah Municipality has just herded them all up - 150 of them over the past six months according to Gulf News - to protect Sharjah's estimated 10,000 dumpsters from their unwelcome depradations. You'd have thought they weren't hurting anybody, wouldn't you? Even that this form of recycling, perhaps an uncomfortable sight for those who'd rather pretend this sort of thing didn't happen, is nevertheless actually efficient and a demonstration of free market economics at work. Cripes, you might even get carbon credits or something.

But no. Sharjah has not only nicked them all, but has issued them with fines ranging from Dhs 1,000 to Dhs 50,000. Where in blue blazes is somebody who's making his living rooting through bins going to find Dhs 1,000 to pay a fine?

"Raiding waste bins is considered a violation of Municipality property, as there is a special recycling plant for the various types of waste," a municipality spokesperson told Gulf News. And therein lies the answer. The dumpster divers' few pennies here and few pennies there tend to rather mount up with 10,000 bins at stake and there's Bee'ah, the national environmental company, at the end of the line, making revenue from recycling. Because where there's muck, there's brass...

You can only hope that these people are shown clemency in the traditional Ramadan amnesties.

The Fast Service

English: Sharjah, UAE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For some reason officialdom has all happened at once this year. Hot on the heels of the great health test and residence visa renewing, I've had to renew my tenancy, which means getting it attested.

As eny fule no, the UAE is a tax free country. This is a good thing, IMHO. It is not 'fee free' however and tenants must pay a 'fee' of 2% of their annual rent to the government and have their tenancy contract attested, which validates it in the eye of the law.

I duly presented myself at the appointed place and was given a queue ticket by one of the harried-looking chaps at the information desk. Clutching ticket 271, I couldn't help but notice the number on the board was 22 - and the hall was full of men standing around with tenancy contracts in their hands. After ten minutes, 22 had become 23 and I was starting to worry about the likelihood I'd be renewing my visa again before my number came up. I waited some more, starting to get that nasty feeling you get when you don't understand a system and are actually in the wrong place. Maybe the 271 related to another area or procedure? Surely I wasn't in a queue of 250-odd that was moving at one every few minutes?

By the time we got to 24, I went back to the information desk to check this was, indeed, my queue. Oh yes, said the chap. You have to wait unless you take the fast service. The what? The fast service. It costs 150 Dirhams. Right, I'll have one of those, please.

Ten minutes later, I'm out of there, clutching my attested contract. And while I am duly grateful for the fast service, I am left with two thoughts.

For one, rather than charge for a fast service, why not fix the system that's so broken that you need a fast service?

And thought the second is why did I sit and watch a man at Deyaar type my details into a PC, print them out on a form and hand it to me, which I duly took to the government office and watched a lady scan to input into some type of document management system? Surely, he could have filled out an online form - in fact, the entire process could take place online in a fraction of the time it's currently taking.

It's at that point I cast my mind back to 'the old days', when attesting a tenancy contract was a ten-step process of jostling queues and men who unpicked the staples from each bundle of papers before shuffling them around in a different order and restapling them and grunting 'seven' at you. This meant 'go and stand in queue number seven now for twenty minutes and he'll unpick the staple and reshuffle the papers back into their original order before grunting 'twelve' at you' and so on in the time honoured tradition of 10 PRINT ABANDON ALL HOPE; 20 GOTO 10.

The Fast Service is progress of sorts. I'll take it, with thanks...

ADNOC To The Rescue!

English: Emarat gas station, Masfut just west of Hatta city, UAE (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Remember PetrolGate, the amazing story of how an oil-producing nation ran out of petrol? And the embarrassing silence of ENOC/EPPCO regarding the closure of its petrol stations in the Northern Emirates?


It's linked here for your viewing pleasure.

Now there's a new and fascinating twist to the tale. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, ADNOC, has signed an MoU with major retailer Emarat to acquire 74 of its 100 petrol stations across the Northern Emirates (Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujeirah).

ADNOC is the only fuel company in the UAE to refine its own petroleum, so it can sell petrol profitably at the UAE's subsidised prices, while the others have to buy their petrol on the international market. This means they were actually losing money for every litre of fuel they pumped.

Just in case readers living elsewhere in the world are interested, we currently pay Dhs 1.72 per litre or $0.47 or, if you prefer, £0.30. It's why I like chatting to London cabbies about how much it costs me to fill a Shogun (the Pajero is called a Shogun in Europe, one suspects because of a little Spanish accident). They're always cheery souls and it does them good to hear me chat about filling a 4WD for under twenty quid.

ENOC found it preferable to close its 51 petrol stations in the Northern Emirates rather than go on selling motion lotion at a loss. That loss cost the Government of Dubai (which owns ENOC) a cool $1.5 billion up to the end of last year.

ENOC's handling of the whole thing eventually led to the Government of Sharjah taking the unusual step of closing down all of ENOC/EPPCOs retail operations in the Emirate.

Amusingly, The National reports the news on the front page of its business section today, adding the detail,

"Like Emarat, Enoc has responded to losses by cutting its exposure in the Northern Emirates. It handed over its petrol stations outside Dubai to Adnoc last July."

This news was actually 'categorically denied' by ENOC last year when Gulf News originally ran the story of ENOC's Northern Emirates stations being taken over by ADNOC. The categorical denial was unusual, coming from a company that had maintained a policy of mendacity followed by radio silence.

Meanwhile, ADNOC will now operate a total of 224 petrol stations throughout the UAE. Profitably.

Poppadom Man

We're very fond of the Kerala poppadoms, the little four-inch diameter numbers made from garam flour and coconut oil. They're probably the one thing with coconut oil in that I'd eat.

The little cold store around the corner from us has been christened Poppadom Man because of the fuss he and his massive extended family of helpers like to make when I buy them.

"Pappadum? You want eat pappadum? This Indian food!"

Yes, yes, I know. Just hand out the poppadoms before I kill you.

They're kept in the little fridge behind the Kit-Kats, little plastic packs with a paper insert proudly proclaiming them as Kerala Poppadum. Toss 'em in a small, hot pan and dry fry 'em and they puff up and crisp - ideal for a crispy side on a curry night, just right for a slather of hot chutney - as evidenced by my ancient post over on The Fat Expat.

Of course, we quickly reached the point where my entry into the shop was greeted with much grinning and  "Wanting pappadum?" But that hasn't detracted by any means from the fun game of feigning surprise at the feringhi who eats pappad.

I have my revenge occasionally, usually when I drop in for something else (their herbs are good, certainly better than the droopy specimens so often found decorating Spinneys' Ajman branch) and the usual question isn't forthcoming, signifying they don't have any poppadums in.

This is when I ask for them on purpose, only to be told 'Poppadum not having, sir' therefore providing my queue to cause an almighty fuss about how any self-respecting Keralite cold store would never run out of poppadum. I mean, what kind of supply chain management do they have around here?

We all must take our amusement as we find it...