Chris Saul's Blog

Wednesday July 30, 2008

Dubai no 1 for expats...

Seabee has some interesting comments on a recent survey about expat hotspots.

I love living in Dubai and so does Mrs Saul. Being here has given us both excellent job opportunities. We had good friends at home, but we actually get to see the good friends we've made here as we all live close to eachother and going camping, offroad driving, etc, is easy to.

When I arrived I expected to work hard, learn a lot, move upwards more quickly in my career and be able to save some money. I was amazed to discover, on arriving, that I could afford to have my clothes laundered, supermarket shopping delivered to my door, have my car cleaned, etc, etc. I remember my astonishment when I first encountered the tea boy at my last company. I didn't have to make my own tea!? Incredible. (Sun don't have a tea boy, I hasten to add). None of this was expected.

As things get more expensive, the core reasons for being here will (hopefully) remain. We'll simply stop doing the things we couldn't afford to do back home anyway - partly because we won't be able to afford them, partly because whilst we may have the money, they're simply not value for money any more. We'll miss that side of life, obviously, but whilst life returns to what I would consider to be 'normal' by UK standards, I'm banking on the fact that the other good points will remain and we will too.

Anti-social hifi engineers

Hi-fi engineers have beavered away for years, lowering costs and improving sound quality.

The result? The apartment two floors down can listen to music with crystal clear tones and a thumping bass. Sadly I can hear their bass too, at the other end of the building.

I love my Bose speakers, but I'm paranoid about playing them too loudly so as not to annoy the neighbours.

I will have to persuade Mrs Saul to move to a large villa in the country so Motorhead can play at top volume and next door's Mariah Carey will never darken our sound cladding.

Reverse Stranded

I can't find my GPS anywhere. It seems to be lost.

How ironic.

Off to India

Providing the courier company gets me my passport on Saturday with my visa inside, I will be off to Mumbai on Sunday for three days.

This will be my first ever trip to India, so I'm pretty excited. I'll be meeting members of the local Sun team and going to see a customer. Can't wait - it'll probably be my usual airport-hotel-meeting-Sun office-hotel-airport schedule, but I'm sure I'll get to see some interesting stuff along the way. I don't mind not seeing any sights on these trips - it's meeting my local Sun colleages, visiting customers that I enjoy most.

I spent a long time at the Indian Consulate in Dubai going through the process of applying for a business visa. I can't recommend the experience - it's not very clear what you're meant to do and signs are posted on A4 paper in very small letters, which means you tend to miss them. The website said I needed two photos and the visa application form said three. Or maybe I misread the website. You also need not only an invitation letter, but a letter from your local employer too, which confused me as well. I must learn to pay more attention.

Various doors were left open all the time, defeating the air conditioning. Waiting to hand my passport over to a cashier took nearly two hours in a crowded, sweaty room. Not much fun. Hopefully next time I visit someone will have fitted something to the doors to make them swing shut automatically, after seeing an irate sweaty Englishman jump up for the tenth time to push it shut.

Unfortunately you don't have the option of picking your passport up yourself. That would have been my preferred choice, as I don't have a very good track record with courier companies here. I really didn't want to go through the usual ritual of someone burbling 'what is your location' at me down the phone before driving off to Abu Dhabi all day leaving me hanging around waiting for a delivery that never arrives when it's supposed to.

Sadly you're not given the option to collect yourself and things have already gone wrong - I got a call today asking 'what is your location' and telling me to expect someone at my residence at around midday. I called at five thirty to be told that actually my passport would be delivered on Saturday. Apparently the person calling me today was simply calling to tell me that the passport had arrived with them. I was obviously imagining things when he was giving me the delivery time and telling me it'd be here today, but never mind.

If it can't be delivered today, why not tomorrow, you may ask? Thursday is a working day, is it not? Well, tomorrow is a government holiday, announced just a week ago. I don't know why a courier company that doesn't work on official holidays is being employed to deliver visas. These kinds of things tend to be time sensitive. I should have had it today, now I'm getting it on Saturday? What if I were travelling on Friday or Saturday morning? I applied in plenty of time. If Starbucks is open tomorrow, I don't see why visa couriers can't work as well. Give 'em a day off in lieu, same as me.

Using the usual approach here of pretending to get angry if you don't like the first option you're given, I was told that the couriers would try to rush my passport to me by eight this evening. Let's see what happens next...

State the obvious

It's that time of year in Dubai when everyone feels compelled to state the obvious.

You get out of your car, walk three minutes to the office and stand in reception. Dripping with sweat, you just have to say 'it's hot!' to anyone who happens to be standing around.

The heat's unpleasant, but it does unite everyone. People who'd never talk to each other in the lift might raise an eyebrow at each other, joined in common sweaty suffering.

In case I hadn't mentioned, it's hot!