Abu Dhabi has big plans

If we thought the development in Dubai was mind boggling, take a look at what Abu Dhabi has planned scroll down to the animated presentation. The plan, Abu Dhabi 2030, is to grow the city to a population of 3 million by 2030. To quote the government website, this urban structure plan "has been created to deliver upon the vision of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, for the continued fulfillment of the grand design envisaged by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and the ongoing evolution of Abu Dhabi as a global capital city." (my emphasis)

Watch out Dubai, Abu Dhabi's coming up behind you and they're in the overtaking lane.....

The blog in the press this week

This week's issue of 'Time Out' features a front page article on the demise of Satwa. My blog is quoted several times in the article including in a highlighted boxed section which is very exciting. Judging from the lack of new information in the article, it seems the reporters hit the same walls of silence within the Lands Department that Satwa residents have been dealing with since February. Nowhere in the article is the development company, Meraas Investment Company, named. Meraas operates under the direct supervision of Dubai ruler Shiekh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum and will be headed by Abdullah Al-Habai of the Engineer's Office. Mr Al-Habai is also a board member of Dubai Real Estate Corporation (DREC). Already contracts for parts of the new development have been awarded including for the building of the sales office. If the authorities as quoted in the article are to be believed (and that'd be a first) the final development plan has yet to be finalised. Out in the real world, the construction industry has the plans, the contracts and the names.

The Meraas company website hasn't changed in months being a single page with the ironic sentence "Our site is designed with you in mind", which is amusingly indicative of their attitute to the public - tell them nothing. Binod H. Shankar the former CFO of Dubai Waterfront Corporation is the CFO of Meraas. Vivek Rao, the Chief Executive Officer, seems to an active speaker on the Real Estate conference circuit.

I fear that to continue down the path of obliteration in the name of profit will doom Dubai to becoming just "somewhere that could be anywhere" full of million dollar ghettos. That would be a tragedy.

Satwa photos

Photos of the Satwa area and the demolition are here.

Madame's "holiday": Part 2

As you know, Madame was pinged doing 183 in a 120 zone, the penalty for which is a AED1,000 fine and poor Madame has to be impounded for a week.
It was decided that, on the Sunday we moved out of Satwa, we’d take Madame down to the Place of Incarceration for her week in the joint/the Greybar Hotel/the slammer. I was going to drive the Disco for the week that she was “inside”. On Sunday morning I went to the garage at Satwa, pointed the key at Madame, pressed “Unlock” and......nothing happened. Tinkle of alarm bells in head. I opened the door manually, oh I already knew what was up but even so I got in and attempted to move the seat forward.....Colin had driven her last so the seat was so far back that it was almost in Karama.....but again, totally dead, nothing happened. Her battery was flat as a pancake, odd considering she was fine the day before.
It took a couple of days to get her going again, we had to borrow a power pack from a friend who also owns an RS6, kick start Madame and then take her to get a new battery. She ran fine, and Colin drove her down to Abu Dhabi to Citiscape, so the battery was fully charged. We decided that the following day she would go into the Pound. I confess here that, STUPIDLY, we discussed this plan in front of Madame and sure enough, the next day when Colin tried to start her........nothing happened....again! The brand new battery was flat. How did the battery go flat overnight eh? Who didn’t want to go to the Pound eh? Who was telling us “Hell no! I won’t go!”
Unfortunately for Madame her protests were in vain. Colin used the powerpack again and got enough juice into the battery to get her out to the Pound. At the Pound there was the obligatory paperwork. If you live in Dubai, this scenario will sound familiar: stand in queue at Counter X and eventually you're given piece of paper and told to go to Counter Y which is somewhere else, exit building, walk round the corner and out the back, stand in the sun, join queue at Counter Y, another man hands over another piece of paper and you're told to take it back to Counter X, walk back into first building, take the piece of paper from Counter Y back to Counter X to be given yet another piece of paper and told to park the car with the Nissan Sunnys (boo hiss). So now the Audi is parked out there and she's in the sun too as they wouldn’t allow a car cover to be put on! Poor, poor Madame!

And Sheikh Mo said "Let there be rain".....

Here's a story that, once I thought about it a bit, is really a bit creepy. We had some rain in Dubai yesterday and ArabianBusiness.com reports "Many UAE motorists making their way home on Tuesday would have put the dark skies and light rain down to just a freak occurrence, but in fact the unseasonably bad weather could have been manmade as scientists were carrying out tests to induce artificial rain.

The Meteorological Department at the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) used aircraft to sprinkle cloud seeding salts in moist clouds heading towards Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Al Ain, reported state news agency Wam." ("Wam"?? You must be kidding? "Yes Ma'am I'm the man from Wam!")

"The monitoring stations subsequently registered light to medium rainfalls in different areas of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Wam said.

Motorists could be in for more bad weather as scientists are planning to repeat the tests again on Wednesday, according to the news agency."

Maybe taking control of the weather is a way of ensuring that we all stay indoors next time a US President comes to town. If the Powers That Be want us to stay at home they'll just cause a rainstorm.

Madame's "holiday": Part 1

Madame with her American friend

You may have noticed that I've often mentioned "Madame" in past posts. When people here talk about a Dubai Madame they mean a woman usually an expat, living the worry-free shopping/poolside/manicures life of luxury here (that's definitely not me then!) But no, this "Madame" is our car; a 505 bhp bi-turbo V8 Audi RS6, a muscle car supreme. I have her all week to go to and from work and Colin says he gets to drive her at the weekend "If he's a good boy." The car was named by Soirse as we ripped along the Hatta Road down to Oman on a visa run: "This is such a Madame car" she said, and the name has stuck. We're both so impressed with the Audi, she handles beautifully on the open road at speed, but is also very "well mannered" in suburban traffic (which is lucky when, like last night, it took me over an hour to travel the 5kms from BurJuman to the Trade Centre).

Anyway, it turns out that Madame was pinged in March doing 183kph in a 120kph zone (for heavens sake it was on a highway in the middle of the desert near Bab al Shams, we're talking "back of beyond" territory here...) As a result not only is there a fine but the car is being impounded for a week. We have to take her to the main police station in Dubai where she'll be locked up in their parking lot for a week.....eeuww.....it'll be full of Kia micro-cars and evil Nissan Sunnys with overdue parking fines.....poor, poor Madame! Our friend Allen's LandRover Discovery has also been impounded for a week so maybe the Disco and Madame can sit next to each other and glare at the other cars.

And before any smartypants(s) say anything, it wasn't me!

Where there's smoke....

BurJurman mall was evacuated yesterday afternoon when acrid smoke filled the luxury shopping mall. The smoke, which came from one of the restaurants, filled all 3 shopping floors of the mall and filtered down to the basement parking. The fire brigade was on the scene quickly and dealt with the fire. However, as expected, there was absolutely no organised direction to confused shoppers on where the exits were to leave the building. Don't tell me otherwise in your glossy press releases! Many shoppers and shop workers gathered in the foyer of the office tower which, in a major emergency and evacuation would be a nightmare as they'd be struggling to get into the office fire exits while the office workers were also using to evacuate from the 25 floors of the business tower. On this occasion there was only smoke, but if there'd been flames, panic would have started and it would have been a disaster. After 18 months the office tower management have still not held an organised tenant evacuation drill. The management hands out a pathetic photocopied book (one copy per tenant) that's supposed to be sufficient. After circling body parts in photos of disaster/accident cases as part of my job 'back in the day' at RT&P, I'm highly motivated to ensure that I'm not a casualty and that nobody I work with is either! So with the support of management, I convinced, ok I nagged, everyone in the firm into taking part in our own evacuation drills. At the first evacuation drill we found the fire exit door to the street had been chained shut. The response was "But Madame don't worry, the door is always open between 10 - 5." Well that's good isn't it because everyone knows that fires keep regular hours. Until February this year the company I work for in BJ Tower seemed to be alone in having any sort of structured and practiced evacuation plan. I'm happy to say that now the Aus Consulate and AusTrade are joining us in our 3 monthly jaunts down the fire stairs. Its not perfect by the standards we're used to in NZ/Aus/US/UK but if it gives us a fighting chance in a real emergency, its well worth doing.
There are photos here.