My parents would go on (and on) about how I should never ever stick posters (or anything) on my bedroom wall using prestik (known to most of you as blu-tack). I would imagine this rule would also have applied to double-sided tape (although this was a less common item in our household when I was growing up), and if it didn’t it certainly should have. I can safely reiterate you should never-ever stick anything to the wall using double-sided tape. And now why would I say this? Well last weekend, as mentioned, we moved into our new villa to discover, amongst some other annoyances, at least 100 pieces of double sided tape stuck to the walls and cupboard doors in the main bedroom and even the mirrors in the main bathroom. Now I know that the previous tenant had a lot of pictures stuck up because I had seen them, but I honestly had not remembered that many. So apart from spending my day last Thursday scrubbing walls, cleaning cupboards, cleaning the fridge and another oven I also tackled said tape with a chisel and thinners. And yes I did have help on the cleaning, two very hard working girls in fact, and no it wasn’t THAT dirty I am just a wee bit pedantic (OK stop nodding). Removing the tape was no fun, no fun at all. Nor is rehanging Roman blinds incidentally, getting the string equally taught so that they open evenly is clearly a skill I have not yet mastered. I did the best I could, at least they are up!
Category: reality
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a ghost city
Stu took these photos the other day when he was passing Ajman. All work appears to have stopped completely on “Emirates City”.
As you can see the cranes are standing still and there isn’t a worker to be seen.
Artists impressions
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more stresssssss, sigh
I am sure you are all waiting with bated breath to find out how the water cooler saga was concluded. Well let me put you out of your misery and tell you how it ended.
Stu and I carted the bloody thing back to Sharaf for the third (and in our minds final) time, and Stu calmly told the “customer service” representative that they now had two options, either give us a refund or give us a new unit. After much too-ing (“oh please sir let us take it for another 3 days and try and repair it”) and fro-ing (“no, either give me my money back or give me a replacement unit”) we demanded to see the manager, or someone who at least had some authority to make a decision. After keeping us waiting another 10 minutes we were finally attended to by someone who looked semi-officious (well he WAS wearing a tie at least). I won’t bore you with the details of the argument that ensued, nor the shouting (me) and swearing (still me) and excuse making (all them) BUT he eventually agreed to compromise and made an exception for us. He then told us he would give us 80% of the original amount we spent (he had to deduct a 20% restocking fee!!?) as a voucher, which annoyingly meant we had no choice but to purchase another cooler from them. Some compromise! We did however purchase a different brand, here’s hoping this one will be a little better.
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legal again
I am happy to report that I am legal again, well in terms of my UAE residence visa that is. After being in visa limbo for a week or two, which felt weird, I was handed my passport today complete with my new residence visa. As part of the process I had to go for another round of medical tests, namely HIV (blood) and TB (chest x-ray) and have been declared, according to the Dubai Government anyway, free from infectious diseases (because there are only 2 that one should worry about right?) Anyway I am sure you are all really relieved by the news.
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more complaints, and a milestone
Looking at some blogs written by people living in the region it seems that customer service, or at least the lack thereof, is a very real and ongoing problem. Ann, from “A Canadian in Abu Dhabi” is having fun and games with Etisalat; Seabee over at “Life in Dubai” has written numerous times about poor customer service whilst I struggle on with the banks here, not to mention a new wrinkle this weekend which I will go into in a sec.