Trying to get a drink (of water)

When I first got off the plane in the UAE, my new employer put all of us new employees through a week of orientation. Of course, I was so jet-lagged, I slept through most of it.

They also put us up in housing they rented, so everyone in my complex worked for my employer. My next door neighbour explained that one must only drank bottled water when in the mysterious Orient, and arranged for me to meet the water delivery person.

Later, others said it was a complete waste of money to buy bottled water, that the tap water in the UAE is perfectly safe. This provoked a bit of a discussion between the bottled water drinkers and the tap water drinkers.

But, before I'd heard any of this, I'd been put on the delivery route for bottled water. Every Tuesday, if I had an empty bottle, I put it out with money under the bottle, and I'd come home after work to find a full bottle of water.

Then the company changed its policy: No more fixed deliveries. Just call when you need water. They didn't bother to tell me, so I kept putting my empty out every Tuesday, and finding it empty when I got home until I finally called them and was told to call whenever I needed water.

Then, when I'd run out of water, I'd call. But then I called one day, and they said they only delivered to my area on Tuesdays, so please put my bottle out on Tuesday and they'd automatically give me a new bottle.

Two weeks ago, I put out my bottle on Tuesday and came home to find it empty. I called. They promised someone would come by.

I came home the next Tuesday to find an empty bottle, got into the shower, and the doorbell rang. The new delivery person expected the normal UAE situation, with an employed person at work all day and a spouse and/or maid at home all day, and he expected to ring the bell and have someone give him the money. He was gone before I could get my clothes on, and left my empty with the money still safely beneath it.

So another week before I get another chance to get my water bottle refilled.

Maybe I should take this as a sign that I should switch to tap?

Reading and Riding

I was in my chauffeured limo, the one that has my logo, RTA Dubai, on the side. Since Arabic is written from right to left (as I've mentioned before), that's really Dubai AT R., where, of course, the R. is for Random.

Anyway, I was trying to read The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, when a man came by and said, 'Is that your mobile ringing?' I looked up from my book, noticed that a mobile WAS ringing, and said, 'No, that's not my ring.' The ringing stopped, and he went back to his seat.

I returned to my reading and read about how the UK, after World War II, didn't have enough food, and bought some of Lysenko's triffids to provide them with a cheap and plentiful vegetable oil that was great tasting and also had all the essential vitamins one needed. (Before the triffids, the Brits had been using fish oil to fry everything, so everything tasted fishy.)

The mobile started ringing again, and I went to where it seemed to be coming from. I looked under the seats and between the seats, but didn't see any lost mobiles. The mobile stopped, and I went back to my own seat and back to John Wyndham, who explained that, for maximum oil production, the triffids had to be allowed to keep their poison sting, and one of them had stung the narrator and left him blind for a couple of weeks, so he'd missed a beautiful meteor shower.

The mobile started ringing a third time, and the person who was searching for it walked past me. I noticed that the ring, when he was in front of me, was in front of me, and that the ring, when he was in back of me, was in back of me.

'The mobile is with you,' I told him. He searched his pockets and found the mobile. His problem was solved.

But I'm still not sure what the UK will do with the triffids.

Dubai Hospital

One of Farook's oldest friends is in Dubai Hospital for heart surgery. He went in about a month ago so they could stabilise him, then he went into cardiac arrest so they had to operate immediately, and he came out of surgery with acute renal failure. Farook has been spending all day most days at the hospital, and I went to visit Farook and our mutual friend.

Dubai Hospital seems very unusual to me, because it is beautifully landscaped with flower gardens and topiary. The grounds were sculpted with man-made rolling hills and walking paths. Most hospitals I've seen were quite utilitarian, and I've seen a lot. My father helped raise the money for the little hospital in our village, and, whenever we went on vacation, he wanted to see their hospital, so, when he got home, he could tell everyone that our village hospital was better. And, if I was with him, he'd drag me along. So I was pleasantly surprised at how beautiful the grounds were at Dubai Hospital, although no one was using the pathways for walking, nor was anyone looking at the flower gardens or the topiary.

After the cardiac arrest about two weeks ago, Farook found his friend with a breathing machine and a kidney machine, and wondered why they were keeping him alive that way. Farook kept saying it was wrong, that his friend was already dead and the doctors should let nature take its course.

Then, on Monday, when I went to meet Farook and see our friend, I found him in the emergency room, since he'd collapsed. He says it was the evil eye (hassad in Arabic), since he'd been talking about how healthy he was and how sick his friends were. And another old friend had also been admitted with heart problems, and I was sent as emissary to transmit Farook's greetings to the newly admitted friend, and to look at the first friend who was just lying there and tell the nurse that Farook and I send our greetings and wishes for his recovery.

Two days later, Farook was completely recovered: I assume he used the usual methods to neutralise the hassad.

And two days after that, the friend who had been on life support was talking, and managed to have what looked like a reasonable conversation with Farook (of course, it was in Arabic, so I have no idea what they said).

Also, spending so much time at the hospital, Farook met an elderly Norwegian whose daughter was in the hospital because of a car accident in Dubai. Three years ago. Her thigh was crushed, and the doctors can't seem to fix it. Her mother naturally wants to do whatever she can for her daughter, and somehow met Farook and enlisted his help, and Farook promised to do everything he can to see that her daughter gets the best care.

I asked the two Norwegian ladies why they were staying in Dubai, and they said that, if they went back to Norway, they live in a tiny village and that's where they'd have to stay, and the healthcare is better in Dubai.

Burj Khalifa?

I was looking at the blogspot dashboard, which informed me that my previous post had no views but one comment. I'm not sure how someone managed to comment without peeking, but that's what the dashboard assured me had happened.

The comment was an incredulous, Whoever claimed that the Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest building?

The hype started when it was being planned as the Burj Dubai, back during the Bush, Jr credit boom. The Sheikh of Dubai found that people were happy to loan him and other investors billions to invest in Dubai. He hoped to build something that looked just like the Jurassic Park in the film (but with animatronic dinosaurs, rather than genetically engineered ones that could really eat people; of course, I read the 'robots will turn on us and kill us all' theme before I read the 'biologists will create a new species that will kill us all' theme, but, if one goes back, Dr Frankenstein was creating murderous biological monsters about a century before the first evil robot appeared).

Dubai was loaned money to START the world's tallest building, the world's largest mall, the world's most advanced complex of amusement parks, the world's first air conditioned beach, etc., etc. Of these, only the Burj was completed. And, even before it was finished, other countries announced that each one was going to built a much taller building.

And the local news reported that China will finish the first building taller than the Burj sometime in 2013. The other announced 'taller than the Burj' buildings still haven't laid the cornerstone.

I must ask Farouk if he can get us into the real Burj, not the bit where the rabble can part with $27 for an hour queuing and 15 minutes part way up the Burj. He managed to get us into the Burj al Arab without paying the usual $54 by saying I was a wealthy German Muslim who had to check that it was really halal before I would rent a suite for a month, and we got the grand tour of the Burj al Arab for free (fortunately, their German hostess was off that evening, something I think Farouk checked before we went, since I don't speak a word of German).

Der Besuch der Alten Dame

There is a radio show about keeping cars in good repair that I listen to for the opening joke by Click or Clack (I can't remember which one tells the jokes and which one just laughs). They told the story of a man who saw another, very elderly man, wearing a tie that indicated that they had gone to the same grammar school, so the first man approached the elderly man.

'Did you go to Richard Cœur de Lion grammar school?' he asked.

'Yes, I did,' answered the elderly man.

'So did I,' said the first man, 'when were you there?'

'I was a student there back in the '60s', answered the elderly man.

'That's amazing,' said the first man, 'I was there back in the '60s.'

'Oh,' said the elderly man, 'were you one of the teachers?'

---

 
I mention this because I met a woman my age here in Dubai about six years ago. One of the problems with the UAE is that much of the world believes that the streets are paved with gold and are convinced that the constabulary will not object to people poking potholes in the sheikh's highway.

These people come to the UAE, take out a business license, hire a bunch of people, and discover that the business doesn't earn enough money to pay them. The UAE law states that employers must pay for the employees' visas and round trip airfare, and so, having quit her job to come to Dubai, after about six months, she was laid off and sent back to her country where she no longer had a job.

Six years later, she got a job in another Gulf country and said she wanted to visit Dubai and see the Burj Khalifa, and I found that, though we're the same age, when she looked at me she saw her father, rather like the two men in the Click and Clack story, both of whom saw a much older man.

So I took her see the Burj Khalifa, which was just in the nick of time, because China is planning to put up a taller building before then end of next year, but when we went in October, the Burj Khalifa was still the world's tallest building.

I found it strange that the taxi dropped us at Dubai Mall, and, when we walked over to the Burj, there was no entrance.

I didn't know when we got there, but the entrance for non-VIPs is from the basement of Dubai Mall. After queuing for an hour, one gets taken on the fastest lift I've ever been on to the 124th floor where there is no place to sit (and the lady with me has a hard time standing for very long) so we stayed a short time and went back down. But at least we can now say we were in the tallest building in the world.

What to see at Dragon Mart

Sheikh Mohammed got the idea that Europe and China will be engaging in more and more commerce, so he set up the Dragon Mart, where hundreds of Chinese factories could set up display booths to show their industrial products to European buyers. They have representatives from motor manufacturers, computer case manufacturers, etc., etc., selling to industries who need parts. The idea is that European and MENA businesses, rather than flying to China and then going to all the different places with factories, can make a single stop in Dubai.

But Dragon Mart had more space than willing factories who wanted to sell directly to other factories, and so a lot of the Chinese stores sell both retail and wholesale. Plus some sell retail only, to provide Chinese consumer items to the Chinese working in Dubai.

Among these retail shops are lots of Chinese herbal medicine stores, mostly tiny stands in the middle of the aisle.

Farook asked me to join him as he went to seek Chinese herbal medicine. On a previous visit to Dragon Mart, he found one stand with a Chinese Muslim from Western China who speaks good Arabic, but Farook couldn't remember where his stand was. I remembered where it was, but Farook kept asking everyone we saw, 'Where Musa shop?' Since the proprietor's name is Dawood, he wasn't having much luck, but we kept wandering down the main aisle until we spotted Dawood, and then Farook spoke Arabic and obtained two bottles of Chinese herbal medicine. (I have no idea what they were, or what they were for.)

I, however, was more impressed when, there at the Chinese herbalist shops, I saw something I've heard about all my life, but never believed it existed: genuine, authentic, 100% pure snake oil.

Seeing that made the trip to Dragon Mart worthwhile, as far as I was concerned.

And for those who say that Dubai is all about selling snake oil, there's a lot more than just snake oil at Dragon Mart, but there is certainly some snake oil.

The Diagnostic Problem (Pt 3)

It was a few years ago that a physician wrote an article for the New York Times. A woman came in to see him. She had a knee injury, and had gone to the medical library and studied her kind of injury. It was clear that one kind of surgery had the best outcomes for her problem, and that the physician in whose office she was sitting had the best reputation for that kind of surgery. As soon as she had explained all this, the physician ordered her out of his office and said he would never accept her as his patient. He never saw her again, and said he would never accept anyone as a patient if that person had gone to a medical library and read about their condition.

Farook is, of course, convinced that he is taking his cousin to the best physician in Dubai, in fact, the best in the UAE, but he still wants extra assurance that this physician is prescribing the best treatment, not the treatment that will be most profitable to the physician. He didn't say so in so many words, but he had asked me to look over his cousin's medical records and go to the library.

I saw one major anomaly: the physician was prescribing anabolic steroids, and the library said anabolic steroids were very dangerous and ineffective for the condition Farook's cousin had. I tried to explain to Farook what I'd found. 'No time. We talk later.'

He asked me to come with him and his cousin one Monday.

Farook used to live about 500 meters away from me, and often called and said, 'You busy? Come with me, I wait you in front your building.'

Now he lives on the other side of Dubai, and his cousin lives in Sharjah, so he wanted me to come to his neighbourhood, a two hour drive.

When I got there, he said, 'Doctor office no see patients today. We take breakfast.'

I really didn't have time, so I said, 'I already had breakfast.' Farook was disappointed, so we had shisha for a couple of hours, then I went off to work.

The next day, I made the trip again, and Farook and his cousin met me and we went to the clinic.

We had to wait, since Farook had told me 9 am since the appointment was at 11 am, and he didn't want to be late.

Finally, the three of us were admitted to the inner sanctorum of the physician's consulting room.

Farook said, 'This my friend. He no speak Arabic and he not know any medicine, so he just sit here. Please talk Arabic.'

So the three spoke Arabic. The cousin wasn't allowed to say much, and I wasn't allowed to say anything.

After the usual 15 minute consultation, we left. Farook seemed happy with the results, whatever they were.

'Now we take big breakfast.'

'I've already eaten,' I said. I hadn't, and I was starving, but I also had a lot of work to do, and it was too late to spend another two or three hours having a leisurely brunch. Farook was very unhappy.

'You no take breakfast yesterday, and you no take breakfast today. I really want to take breakfast with you.'

And I really wanted to get to work, so I took my chauffeured limo to the office. (My private limo has my initials on it, Dubai RTA in big, bold letters. Since Arabic is written right to left, that's really Dubai At R.)

It was now clear that Farook was afraid the physician was not giving his cousin the cheapest and most effective treatment, but he didn't want to be booted out of the physician's consulting room like the New York lady, so he took me along as his rabbit's foot. He figured that the physician, seeing a Western face, would be afraid to prescribe the wrong thing. Farook (I assume, since it was all in Arabic) was being obsequious and agreeing wholeheartedly with whatever the physician recommended, and didn't want me to mention that I had been to the medical library, or give the slightest indication that anyone had checked up on the physician, but he hoped my Western face, sitting silently in a corner of the office, would convince the physician to diagnose correctly and prescribe that much sought (and often missed) cheapest and most effective treatment.

Whether Farook's latest scheme worked, I have no idea.