Chris Saul's Blog

Thursday January 15, 2009

Sign of the times - leaving cards out of stock

One of the ladies* in our office is arranging the 'goodbye' card for a colleague who's leaving - not an easy task, apparently, as two of the three card shops she visited in Dubai were completely out of stock.

* These sort of things would never happen if it were just men in the office. Many of my close friends have only ever rec'd birthday and Christmas cards from me in the years since Mrs Saul came on the scene...

Rain

It rained in Dubai last night, with lots of thunder and lightning too.

Have a look at this video of our next door neighbour - freeze at 29 seconds in to see the lightning strike the Burj!

I am expecting wet patches on our ceiling by the end of today, but there is some progress in that department.

Yesterday I met up with the only helpful person involved in any of our property woes, 'Dave' from the main contractor. Dave will be looking at the roof above us to see if there are any obvious leaks. His team will be taking a chunk out of our dining room wall to help find out if the bubbling under the paint is caused by water leaking from the bathroom, or by something else.

This is movement in the right direction, which is a relief.

There was some bad news, however.

The noise coming through the window at night into our bedroom is not caused by traffic or passing planes. It is caused by air for the building's air conditioning whooshing along in a nearby pipe. When the AC is on, you can hear a rumbling, but it's not too annoying - distracting if you're finding it hard to get to sleep, but not the end of the world. As the moment our AC is off and the noise is driving me crazy. At times it sounds like a plane flying past. Having spent most of my early years living near to Heathrow, noise from planes doesn't really bother me. Noise that sounds like noise from planes but is actually air rushing through an AC pipe is infuriating. Strangely, Mrs Saul is not bothered by the sound, but that may be because she works far harder than me and falls into a deep sleep the moment her head hits the pillow.

Apparently there is little that can be done about this particular issue. It's caused by stupid design and can't be rectified without major structural changes. A nearby building is much more affected, I am told. I will be in touch with people living there to see if anything is being done about it.

The second piece of bad news was about sound proofing, or lack of it. Walls between rooms in the apartment apparently consist of one concrete block. Walls between apartments consist of two concrete blocks. There is no specific soundproofing whatsoever and the nature of the wall's construction means various sounds - chairs scraping, voices, knocks and bangs etc - travel straight through. There is also probably very little that can be done to the wall itself to improve things, even if I paid for the work to be done myself.

I'm waiting for the property developer itself to confirm all this officially. If this is true, which I expect it to be, I'm extremely disappointed. A flagship development with no soundproofing? Pathetic.

Dave has a sound proofing person who will hopefully come around to do some tests and possibly recommend a way to improve things.

Despite all this, our situation is still better than the poor couple who, I am told, bought an apartment that backed onto the kitchen of a nearby cafe. They have had to move out whilst the entire wall is taken down and soundproofing installed. Not surprisingly, trying to get to sleep at night with a fully operational kitchen next door to you, separated by a small, uninsulated wall, was a little difficult.

Buses for Africa

An interesting article here from the BBC, about the Ivory Coast building its own buses (albeit based on components from Iveco).

This comment caught my eye -

"In Europe the technology is very sophisticated with lots of electronic devices. In Africa we don't need this. We just need robust buses because our roads are not very well done like in Europe. This is an African design for Africa."

This is something I've commented on here before. Many of the countries I visit have roads filled with what you might call 'serviceable' cars. By serviceable, I mean vehicles that a decent mechanic can repair and maintain without having to buy a proprietary diagnostic computer system from the manufacturer, or having to stock up on tonnes of electronic gadgetry simply for the key to be able to turn in the ignition. Most of these vehicles are pre-1995, not particularly luxurious but still going strong.

A Lebanese Liberian Toyota importer I met in Ghana (sorry, I'm showing off a bit here) told me that older model Toyota pickups fetch a much better price than the current range - the previous generation are simply tougher, last longer and are more reliable. It's interesting to see a market where a ten year old secondhand vehicle can be worth more than its three year old younger brother.

I wonder how much electronics is really needed and whether there's a market for European vendors to produce more basic vehicles, both for Europe and elsewhere? How about a Mercedes S class or Range Rover for Africa?

I believe that Land Rover and other manufacturers have versions of their basic 4x4s that are for the Africa market only. The reason they are 'Africa only' is that the electronics have been removed - that doesn't mean simply providing manual rather than electric windows, it means removing some of the electronics involved in engine management. The result is a more reliable car, but one that is more polluting and wouldn't meet European and US standards. At least, that's what I have heard from people in the know.

Some European vendors are definitely manufacturing more solid, less complex vehicles for sale outside Europe. South Africa has a VW factory producing what are essentially Golf Mark 1s with an updated interior, as well as a VW van from the same era. They aren't expensive and are still fairly basic. I am sure that VW don't sell these in Europe so as to avoid cannibalising their more recent and more expensive models. This is understandable. I am sure they would sell extremely well if they were available, particularly given the current climate. Maybe we'll start to see some brand new, right hand drive new/old Mark 1s appearing on the streets of Essex. Kevin and Gary would be souping them up in no time.

What will be on the roads of, say, Casablanca in twenty years' time? Will the 1970s Mercedes 200 taxi still be going strong whilst Europe's scrapheaps are full of Mercedes' 1990 to 2010 models? Or will Casa's roads be filled with the cars currently driving around Europe? Will simpler models, stripped of electronic unreliability be sold directly to Africa or will electronics keep their place but become more reliable and easy to maintain?