The First Mosquito

Yesterday, for the first time in Dubai, I was stung by a pesky mosquito. And it stung me 4 friggin times. As the seasons in India, and now in the UAE, seem to revolve around mosquitoes, I clearly remember the first time I spotted a mosquito here – 18th September 2008. The climate must be changing now – the mosquitoes are beginning to come alive (only God knows where they’ve hidden all these months), the tap water’s not as steaming hot at 5am as before (it’s only mildly warm now), and I just screwed up my entire library of work information gathered through the years through sheer stupidity… Not really, but now I officially hate Microsoft Vista for fiddling with the ‘My Documents’ folder we’ve grown so accustomed to for so many years. I deleted a folder named ‘Documents’ that was inside the ‘Videos’ folder because it was an exact duplicate of the ‘Documents’ folder under ‘Gary’. And ‘POOF’, the extra efficient computer deleted the blasted Folder in less than two minutes, with a stop, informing me that the files are too long to be in the Recycle Bin or something like that, and whether I’d want to continue. And I happily said Yes! Why not? And then there was none, no more stupid folders called ‘Documents’ in my entire computer except in the Recycle Bin.

No worries, that’s what Recycle Bins are for, …until you try restoring it and find the reinstated ‘Documents’ Folder with nothing inside.

The Adventures of Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battuta vs The Sultan of Delhi

Just some pictures of the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai… That’s what you do when you have a demanding Project (or boss) to serve. Ibn Battuta was a traveller in the 14th century, who is my type of fellow (he far out-travelled Marco Polo – wiki it).


Yours truly in the Egyptian Court


A big junk in the Chinese Court


The Tunisian Court


Gary & ex-Mumbai friends in the Persian Court (from left – Ching, Lim & Livia)

For Better or For Worse?

Things have changed slightly in our work life recently. My venerable old boss, ex Mizoram, and ex Bharatpur, has rejoined China State as Senior Project Manager of the new Project I’m in. He’s the one who actually introduced me to this Company in the first place, but he left before I joined. Now that he’s back, the working environment here has started to take on the feel of a real Project work environment, like starting work at bloody 6.30am in the morning (meaning I have to wake up at ungodly 4am to complete all my daily stuff, particularly the toilet thing), and finishing work at 6pm, 6 days a week. And that’s not including the half-day he requested all of us ‘leaders’ to put in on our only off-day of the week (Friday). …Somehow, I miss the days in the old Project when our work routine is strictly 8-6 Saturdays to Wednesdays, and 8-4 on Thursdays…

Dubai Update: More Dubai

The Bastakia Quarters, Dubai

Hi I’m back. As usual it’s the end of the month, and I really wanna keep to my commitment of having 2 posts per month, so here goes.

Nothing’s changed much. Anu has started working, in the same Company, and the same office that I work in – that pretty much takes care of her boredom and the transportation arrangements. Good.

I have given up my wonderful car, reluctantly, very reluctantly, mainly due to the constant prodding of dear wife, who didn’t want me to drive without a license, seeing the so many accidents on the way to work and back, which is the right thing to do. Except that now we have to take the local cabs. They’re good, they’re controlled by the local government and they charge by the meter (unlike their counterparts in Malaysia, Truly Asia, who will do anything, not to run by the meter, especially when it comes to tourists). There is only one tiny problem with the cabs here, they’re either not very easy to find or there’ll be a queue of about a city block long waiting for them, so much so that we have waited 2 hours, twice, for a cab to take us back home from City Centre. Buy a book and some takeaway dinner if you’re planning to travel this way.


A café at the Souq Madinat Jumeirah

Food. Food is simply wonderful here. Lunch is free (for me and wife because it is somehow included, and we get an authentic Chinese lunch daily, generously slobbered with oil, prepared by real Chinese cooks, with fruits to go). I eat most of my other meals at home, compliments of my delightful wife. Eating outside is also interesting as there’re lots of varieties to choose from, and helps you get rid of your hard earned money so that you will have less to carry when you go home. The cheapest food is the pay-by-the-kg cooked food you get at the hypermarkets like Lulu or Carrefour. Otherwise any food will set you back at least RM25 per meal.


The Food Court at Dubai Festival City

People. The locals have some kind of a dress-code to differentiate men from women – white for men and black for women (no, I have no idea why). Men wear pressed long sleeved, kurta-like ankle-length shirts (dishdashas) with sandals, and a white ‘dish-cloth’ (gutra) on their heads tied with a black rope. The effect looks very cool – clean, elegant and pleasing to the eye. The only problem to this, I think, is when they wanna run or ride a bike, or maybe pee in a urinal. Maybe that’s why many of the men’s toilets here don’t have urinals (and I thought I went into the ladies by mistake.)

I’ve read that this attire has something to do with the Arab identity and non-Arabs aren’t encouraged to wear these (if not I think it’d be simply superb for people with hyperactive sweat glands on the head, …like me).

Women’s dresses are more varied – the more traditional wear full-length dresses completely in black with either a veil or a Darth Vader mask (ok, I’m exaggerating – they don masks but they’re not as cool as Darth Vader’s – something like a bronze-coloured piece of cardboard shaped somewhat like a duck-bill). The more liberal minded are usually dressed in sleek floor-length black satin dresses with matching satin black head scarves, and artistically designed glittering sequins or ornaments. They look simply exotic and elegant. The liberal-minded are almost always heavily made up with blackened eye lids, long eyelashes and big hair bobs at the back of their heads beneath their head scarves, so that they have sort of a crown beneath, …something to make them look like the Crystal Skull beings of Indiana Jones.


Darth Vader in Mirdif Uptown, a shopping area near our house

Dubai usually smells nice (or at least in the supermarkets where we spend most of our time in when we’re not working). The locals have a knack for perfume and incense. The exception to this is right outside our ‘villa’ where the sewage overflows each day due to the excessive shit and etc that China State (my company) employees dump into the local sewage system. Parking space No 1 is therefore off-limits to anyone without gum boots.


Anu outside our villa, purposely blocking parking space no.1 from view

Dubai is also quite clean (again in the supermarkets). This could be due to the floor-length dresses (abeyya) the local women wear that automatically sweeps the floor wherever women go… Or maybe it is just the army of migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippine etc, etc, etc.


Another picture of Mirdif Uptown

OK, enough for this month, going back to work now.


A violin troupe performing at the Mall of the Emirates


Yet another picture of Mirdif Uptown, well it’s only 5 minutes from our trusty ‘villa’


The gang of 3 (I with Joseph, Assistant PM and Nasar, Safety Manager) at Al Mamzar Park with a view of Sharjah (another emirate) across the creek

Dubai Update: The Arabian Fantasy Land

Dubai Creek

I am back. And now more on Dubai.

Dubai is a fantastic place, for construction people like me. Everything is in the process of being built. It is a city full of sky scrapers and tower cranes, including the soon-to-be 800m high Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, for now. There’s news that Dubai is planning an even taller building, a 1.2km high building that will connect earth to Heaven.


Some of the buildings lining Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai

Dubai is also a wonderful haven for shoppers. There is a shopping mall with an indoor ski resort (yes, a ski resort in a bloody 50 degree C desert). There is one with different architecture from different parts of the world. There is one shaped like an enormous emu (kidding, I made that up). And Dubai is gonna have the biggest shopping mall in the world by 2009. Anyway, the shopping malls are a great place for us to hang out in our free time. We can shop, see movies, look at interesting and weird people, eat at the multiple food courts, shop some more, and blow away all our savings – which is what Dubai wants us to do I think, with its Dubai Shopping Festivals and such.


Inside the Dubai Festival City


The lobby of the Dragonmart where all things Chinese in Dubai can be found (this is the place for cheapskates like me…)


Anu at the galleria of the Mall of the Emirates (where Ski Dubai is)

The roads and highways in Dubai are just as amazing. The project we’ve recently just got is to increase a six lane road (it ain’t even called a highway) into a 12-lane road. Some of the major roads in Dubai have something like 18 lanes and dedicated flyovers to God-knows-where. Our current project involved expanding a 4-lane road into a 6-lane road in the middle of a Residential Area, so that cars can zoom home at 150 km/h, never mind the pedestrians, baby trams, cyclists, joggers, pets… besides, who’s gonna walk around in the bloody heat huh? Anyway, Dubai has one of the highest rates of traffic accidents per capita in the world, so it’s no big deal.


Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai

Cars are cheap here. And so is petrol. Unlike Malaysia, Dubai is still rich enough to keep fuel prices ‘low’ (about RM 1.20 per litre of petrol), and is more interested in making money in other ways such as forcing poor people, like yours truly, to go through driving lessons (minimum 20 lessons) and take driving tests, despite having 20 years driving experience. The initial cost of the lessons and the test is about RM 2,300. If you fail, and about 99% fail on their first try, you’ll have to cough up another RM 700 or so, and it goes on until you pass. Dubai’s mission when it comes to driving is to make it as difficult as possible for a poor fellow to get a license so that they can increase the country’s revenues by taking advantage of stupid migrant workers (like yours truly) wanting to drive a car. Licenses from developed countries (like Singapore) can be converted by paying a fee of RM 135. And now you know why the rich stay rich while the poor become poorer.

Rich people (locals and those from the developed countries) drive fantastic cars. Convertibles are a common thing and are usually driven by whites (probably so that they can sunbathe in the soon-to-be 50 degree C afternoon sun while they drive, and get a feel of fabulous desert sand). There are Hummers and Humvees (which I used to like when I saw it in The Rock) that look like gigantic tupperwares. There are sports cars of all types, and impossibly long limousines for the people with long legs and their pet giraffes.

OK, going back to work now. Here’re more pictures for the time being.


Dubai Creek on a dusty day


An abra (boat) station at the man-made waterway of the Souq Madinat Jumeirah

Dubai Update: Ramblings of a Follow-Up Clerk

Umm Suqeim Beach with the Burj-Al-Arab in the background

Hi! For my family and friends who’re wondering how we’re doing here in Dubai, we’re fine. It’s now our third month here, and the temperature is shooting steadily up. I have nothing much to write about because I’m all grown up now and have now started being responsible, and serious at work (I’m 38 after all, and married). Very soon, I will be like all the typical middle-aged men with serious and boring mindsets, thinking only of career and the future of the family, and then I will finally have nothing to write about. Before I become that serious, here’re some tips if you wanna visit Dubai in the future.

Come to Dubai only if you have to work here, or if you wanna fly to some exotic destinations, like in Somalia or Iraq which you can’t get a direct flight to from wherever you are. Or if you are a sand lover with loads of cash to spare.

Dubai is beautiful. It is sunny, all the time (except at night). It has a long coast line, it is hot (even at night) and it has lots and lots of sand. There are no animals roaming around the streets, no mosquitoes so far (to my delight), and only tiny little cockroaches which are not as scary as the huge ugly ones in Malaysia. It has generally no trees along the sides of the roads, no grass on the shoulders or the middle divider, and only 3 drops of rain since I step foot here. In other words, it is a gorgeous desert.


Our ‘villa’ in Mirdif, Dubai – there’re 7 ‘villas’ in that building

However, Dubai is very rich, and it runs water pipes (called irrigation pipes here) with sprinklers to all the road sides and middle dividers at prominent areas and to gardens of rich people (which means most of the locals) to keep the grass and flowers alive and date palms flourishing. For some reason or other (or maybe because no other fruit trees grow in a bloody desert), date palms are the favourite trees in Dubai and in Arabia in general, so much so that it features prominently as national symbols, and in Dubai, the authorities built 3 huge groups of artificial islands shaped like the beloved date palm in the sea adding more than 1000km of coast line to Dubai.


A billboard showing the planned development on Palm Jumeirah

The Dubai Government is one of the most efficient governments I’ve ever known, especially at making money, which is what is important for the country right? It requires foreign workers to get all their certificates attested at their home country and a second time when they arrive here in Dubai (or that’s what our Company’s PRO tells me). Attesting a certificate at the UAE Embassy in Kuala Lumpur costs RM 150 per certificate (or RM 225 per certificate if you want it ‘express’ i.e. within the day). (For comparison, attesting a certificate at Wisma Putra, i.e. the Malaysian Foreign Affairs Ministry, costs you RM 10, and you get it within 15 minutes). Attesting certificates a second time here in Dubai costs AED 150 (about RM 130) per certificate. The UAE Embassy will only attest certificates / documents issued in Malaysia. And therefore by that logic, if I want to attest my University Degree which is from the UK, I’d have to fly to London, get the British Foreign Ministry to endorse it and then the UAE Embassy in London to attest it. Similarly, if I want to get my Indian Marriage Certificate attested, I’d have to do it in New Delhi. This is brilliant for generating air travel.

I did not have the privilege to travel around the world and therefore I am a ‘Follow-Up Clerk’ here in Dubai, albeit a not-doing-too-bad Follow-Up Clerk. I have no problems with this as long as the Company pays me what they’re supposed to pay me plus give me all the benefits I’m entitled to. The Follow-Up Clerk is now drafting a Project Quality Plan for a new multi-million Project and Procedures for operating the Asphalt Plant – pretty heavy work load for a follow-up clerk I’d say.


Anu and our car at the road outside our ‘villa’ (car number? – C 20586, for the empat-ekor enthusiast)


A road to nowhere near our ‘villa’


Dubai Creek overlooking Deira


Gary & Anu at the Souq Madinat Jumeirah with the bloody expensive 7-star Burj-Al-Arab in the background

Agra

The Itimad-Ud-Daulah, aka Baby Taj, at Agra, Uttar Pradesh

I realize nowadays that I have nothing fun, interesting, or even distressing to write about.

Yes, I still reminisce about going to far-flung places where nobody’s ever been to, but apart from that …nothing. No fantasies about romancing the next Ms Universe, no plans for having a wild party the coming weekend, or the weekends to come, not much knowledge about what new movies are in town, no daydreams about monsters, buildings or scenarios to put on paper while attending a boring meeting, no ideas for creating new writing scripts, no looking forward to a good old computer hack-the-helloutta’em game, no longing for a nice novel, no roaming animals in the street to gawp at (because this is a bloody desert, and animals, apart from camels, are usually smart enough not to loiter around a barren patch of sand)…

And no ideas at all for a stupid title to this entry.

The only things which are in my mind nowadays, are, what type of management systems I can put in place for the new Project we’ve just got? What sort of bloody way we can use to tackle this new project? When is it time to go home to be with wife...

I think I better go with pictures of Agra from last year… That’s the place where we did our weekly grocery shopping when we were in Bharatpur. Agra is about 1.5 hours away on our very own Project Highway, 2 hours or more when the state border guards decide to check the lorries (usually at night when all you wanna do is go straight home and jump into bed, and you’re caught up behind, in front, or beside a mess of huge trucks arguing, blowing their horns, bloody flashing their lights…). Driving to Agra and back are the highlights of any trip to Agra, you get to manoeuvre around slow big fat tractors, killer trucks and buses, safety barriers (ours) and potholes that pop up from nowhere; squeeze your cars in between the hordes of rickshaws, push-carts, bicycles, street vendors, pedestrians, cars, …gosh, how I miss that…


Anu and the surreal Taj Mahal ...bloody expensive entrance fees (for foreigners), i've paid 3 times the 750 rupees!


On the bank of the Yamuna River, at Itimad-Ud-Daulah


Anu’s eldest sister Manju and son Kunal at the Agra Fort

In Memory of Rani

Our little doggy, Rani, passed away on the 1st of May in Fulertal, Assam.

She was we think, killed by a much bigger dog, a guard dog from a nearby school at night. Anu’s sister Amrita found her body in the morning near the house, with a small wound on her belly.

Rani was the best and gentlest doggy we’ve ever known. Throughout the 2 years that she’s been with us and Anu’s family, we’ve grown to be very fond of her and Anu’s family has taken to her like part of the family.

Thank you Rani,
for being such a wonderful companion, not only for me but for so many people who know you,
for the sweet company that you provided me in my times of loneliness and troubles,
for bringing me and Anu together,
for being so excited and happy every time you see me or Anu, even after so many months of us not being around,
for always wanting to cuddle up to us whenever we’re around,
for giving me so many fond memories,
for being the most adorable dog I’ve ever known,
for being my good ‘daughter’.

In my heart, you will always remain. May you rest in peace.

Bye-Bye Bharatpur

The mustard fields of Bharatpur

This update is long overdue.

It has finally come to the time when I had to leave the gorgeous wonderland of Bharatpur with its horde of birds and beasts, and mosquitoes, and my friendly smartass managers; and yeah, a few friends.

…That was more than a month ago. Since then, I’ve been back to my nomadic lifestyle, jumping from place to place, from the dust fields of Rajasthan to the green valleys of Assam, from the traffic jams of New Delhi to the traffic jams of Kuala Lumpur, from the Malaysian High Commission in India to the Indian High Commission in Malaysia, from the Ipoh Immigration Department to the UAE Embassy in KL, from Wisma Putra (in Putrajaya) to Butterworth, from Genting Highlands to Pangkor Island, from Ipoh back to the desert, and this time a real sandy one, in the Arabian Fantasy World called Dubai… Bloody expensive place! Let’s leave it at that for the time being since I’ve just started work, don’t wanna give my new employer the impression that I use company’s time and resources to surf and blog. Anyway here’re some pictures of Bharatpur… just to show case how ‘nice’ a place Bharatpur can be… cameras, they can do wonders huh?


Entrance to Bharatpur's Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary (aka our jogging ground prior to bloody winter freezing over) - entrance is free before 6am


In the grounds of Bharatpur's King's palace at Deeg village


Our landlord and his wife at the house during the Karva Chauth festival - dunno the significance of the festival, but it's supposed to bring good fortune and blessings to the husband. The wife has to fast for a whole day (which should be quite a feat for our landlady), wait for the moon to rise (hard luck if there're heavy clouds but luckily this was Rajasthan, bloody dry Rajasthan), see husband's face indirectly (i.e. from the reflection in the water, or through a sieve), touch husband's feet, ...pray for husband I suppose, and then she can eat. The husband in return, just needs to hang around doing nothing, great festival ...if you're male huh?

The Lost City of Akbar

This is Fatehpur Sikri, a city commissioned and built by Akbar, one of the greatest kings of the Mughal Dynasty – the dynasty that built the Taj Mahal and ruled most of India until the British kicked them out. Fatehpur Sikri sits smack within our Agra to Bharatpur Highway Project, so there’s no chance not visiting it.

Fatehpur Sikri was for a short time, the capital of Mughal India until Akbar found it near impossible to channel water to it despite the engineering marvels of the time. He promptly moved the capital back to Agra (about 40km away), and abandoned the city to the ravages of time – No, it was not a folly, he knew from the start that it’d become a tourist attraction in about err... 400 years time and then the foreign tourists would have to cough up about 20 times the amount that a local would have to pay, and generate loads of revenue for his country, apart from generating job opportunities for the local boys (as tourist guides), who would generally bug the shit out of you, and tell all how great Akbar was, how he was very respectful and tolerant of all religions, so much so that he had a Hindu wife, a Muslim wife and a Christian wife all at the same time, living in the same place ...i.e. this place. Now, that’s what you call, a king.


Anu's sister Manju, and her son, Kunal at Fatehpur Sikri


Anu glaring at the countless guides, touts and you name it at the Buland Darwaza (literally Huge bloody Gate - ...my translation)