About Time

Well, my last post was December 25th 2006, some time ago. We have done many things and been many places as a family since then. Let's see, we took a trip to Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar in Africa. Visited the Maldives, Oman, Bahrain and spent a week in Paris and Normandy. I've been to the Gulf of Oman several times on diving trips with my friend and have seen many interesting fish and mammals. The Atlantis resort is just about finished and now we are looking for more work in the U.A.E. I just put some money down on a new villa down the road from where we are now so we are going to be staying here for at least another year. We have signed the contract for the Yas Island water park so we have something to do while I'm here. All in all things are looking good. So I'm wondering when it is all going to fall apart.

Now that I've covered the last two years in one paragraph, I'll start from the present and give you an idea of what it is like living in Dubai. It is July now and the day time temperature hovers any where from a chilly 98 to a balmy 114. The humidity hovers anywhere from 50% to 85%. The hotter it is the lower the humidity. The air can only hold so much water. Just as an aside. I've heard a lot of Texans claim that's what the weather is like in Texas. The highest temperature recorded in Dallas by the National Weather Service was 114 back in 1927 or something like that. We have 114 just about every day. So it isn't as hot in Texas, sorry. Just so everyone knows. No matter where you've been, it's hotter here. Unless you've been to Riyhad or Kuwait City. And I know no one reading this has been to either of those two places.

Ok. Ranting done.

So in mid July two of my villas four air conditioning units stop working about two days before my boss comes into town. Now since I don't have the time to sit at home waiting for the AC guys to show up, I suffer through a week of sweaty sleep until the boss goes home. I call the landlord advising him of the need to fix the AC units and he sends me a text message that the guys will be there at 10:00 am the next morning. So I shuffle around my schedule so I can be there when they show up. (I have this thing about letting unknown Pakistanis rummage through my house when I'm not there.) The next morning I get an SMS from the landlord telling me that the guys won't be there until noon. Which is OK because I forgot about an appointment I had that morning at 10:00. Great looks like things will work out. Well my 10:00 am went a little long so I rushed home to get to the house by noon thinking these guys would show up on time. Ha ha ha! What a moron!!! I've lived here for two years and I expect these guys to be on time. Stupid me. I arrive at home at 11:59 and begin my 3 and a half hour wait for these wing nuts. After three hours and four phone calls telling me they were just turning up the road, they showed up. They brought in their ladder and their plastic bag with a couple of screwdrivers and a hammer. What they would need a hammer for to fix the AC I couldn't tell but there you go. They rummaged around for a half an hour, talked on their cell phones, ate a shwarma and then told me that the compressor was "finished" (accompanied by a head shake) and started to walk out the door. "Whoa!, hold on there Rajiv, you guys made me wait all day and now you are telling me you didn't fix anything?" His reply was "It's OK sir." At this point my blood, already 114 degrees, began to boil. "No it's not OK. I waited for you all day and you didn't fix a bloody thing. It's not OK." After a pointless 5 minutes telling this monoglot why it was not OK he said that I needed to talk to the boss, Ravi. "Where's Ravi?" "In the truck sir." I found Ravi in the truck, asleep. I thought he was dead because of the flies crawling out of his nose and on his lips but he wasn't. As evidenced by his hitting the roof when I yelled at him to wake up. I've never seen an Indian (dot not feather) move so fast in my life. It probably took 10 years off his life. A quarter of his life expectancy. Ravi got an ear full from me about how it wasn't OK, that they couldn't come back tomorrow because I had a job to do and I couldn't wait around for them all day. After about 20 minutes of brow-beating and pointless calls to someone, probably his brother in Kerala, he promised me that he would be back that night with the tools to fix the AC. Well stupid me, I believed him. I should have taken one of his guys hostage to make sure they came back but I would have just ended up with another mouth to feed.

So the next morning I got another SMS from the landlord telling me that they were going to be back at 10:30. This time I was smarter I didn't get home until 10:05 expecting them to be late. The problem is they aren't even reliable enough to always be late. You think you've got these guys figured out so you give them 1/2 an hour to be late and they show up on time. Then you get this condescending phone call from some guy telling you he's at your house waiting for you, why aren't you there?

Anyway, they only showed up about 45 minutes late, and it was a completely different crew. I think a different company too. I must have scared Ravi and his band of loony tunes off. They are off sending some other expat stark raving mad.