People Power

When I came back home yesterday, I found a letter saying 'Full DEWA connection will be restored and the building will not be running on generators anymore..' Damn that was fast!

On my way out to the office this morning to check my emails, I spotted a DEWA car parked next to the electricity room outside our building. A gov official on duty at 7am on a Friday morning?!! Now I have seen it all.

Was it really a coincidence that the day we got our water and electricity in our tiny and overpriced apartment was the same day everyone in the UAE read about it in the paper?

I highly doubt it.

It is a shame really. Not the situation we (myself and 60 other families) living like dogs and paying an average of 9 to 10k a month for it; No, but the fact that service providers, (landlords, real-estate agents and dewa) were taking us, the avarage people, for fools.

They were abusing the fact that majority of tenants staying in our building will not whine, moan or revolt like madmen. I’ve met most of them. All are decent family men and women, hard working in respectable companies and all what they wanna do it just to get on their days.

We were tolerant, we were accommodating and we were very very understanding. So what did we do to deserve this?

This was the situation: DEWA power connection from our building to the main area 'power transformer' was being blocked by another construction site 500 meters only from the power station. I wrote about it here.

Fine, these things happen all the time, I was told. And they are usually sorted in a couple of days, I was also informed. So why did take all this time? Also, why didn't the landlord pressure DEWA to take action against that contractor who was blocking the way?

A. Most probably our landlord was busy running his other businesses
B. No one was complaining, so no one would mind if DEWA was late
C. He did but the owner of the construction site has big wasta
D. All of the above

Okay … why didn't DEWA do anything; since they cleared out the building and instructed the landlord to ask the people (US) to move in - DEWA should be responsible for its actions and act accordingly?

A. Most probably the DEWA site surveyor didn't report the situation to his superiors
B. He saw that the building being denied service (ours) is a tiny one and doesn't belong to Emaar or Palm or any other major bigwigs. So, khalli walli.
C. He did but the owner of the construction site has big wasta
D. All of the above

Fine… when the landlord found out that it was end of Feb and nothing happened; why didn't the landlord escalate it with the authorities? The Municipality, the police, legal prosecution?

A. Most probably its cheaper to rent a couple of generators than having to file law suites and legal complaints
B. All the tenants are "effing expats", so they can all Khalli walli
C. He did but the owner of the construction site has big wasta
D. All of the above

Okaaay... The landlord had a great opportunity to involve the tenants and make them be part of the solution; instead, he kept everyone in the dark (no pun intended) Why didn't the landlord communicate openly?

A. Because he commissioned a bunch of morons, bloodsucking, we-have-nothing-to-do-with-it, real-estate agents that represented him.
B. He thought that its better to just avoid them whining and complaining
C. All the tenants are "effing expats", they are good for nothing. So they can all Khalli walli as well.
D. All of the above

I have a lot more really; but it’s Friday morning and i really need to head back home. I just want to make is clear that all the above does not mean I do not appreciate or sympathize with what the landlord had gone through. It must've been hard on him as well.

I just think if he communicated with us openly, sacked those good-for-nothing agents, and made us the tenant directly involved (or at least informed), I am confident that we would have helped him find a solution for it. Ironically, it actually WAS us -the tenants- who found the solution for it.

Again, thank you GulfNews!

Sounds familiar?

Read here ;)

Almost there...

Our landlord people informed us that we can turn on bedroom ACs only...

Nope, we don't have DEWA yet, but I think they found a way to power up half of the ACs in the building on the generators outside.

Believe it or not, in a very odd way, I do sympathize with the landlord and the project manager of this building. They must be getting flaming phone calls every minute of the day..

Anyhow, I can't say we are half way there, cause we are still off line. I did this post from work.

Oh one more thing,



I am 1 year older today :P

Ciao

Ideas.. anyone?

I sat on the balcony to do some (offline) work this evening. My super special and totally pimpped-out WIFI application was set on detecting public wireless signals. I didn't expect to detect anything 'cause our building is kindda standing alone and is quite a stretch from any structures in the vicinity.

To my surprise, turned out that there are a number of signals floating in the air. Some of them with decent signal strength; I think most are coming from that villa compound down the road. Occupants over there all look like rich bastards, I don't think any of them mind borrowing some bandwidth..

God damn it! Just got disconnected. i will complete this post offline.

Anyhooooo … As you might have already guessed; No Internet, no phones, and yup .. no DEWA - which means we still do not have ACs. It almost mid March, and we are still living off tiny power generators.

I've met a number of neighbors and none of them is happy to say the least.

We were thinking of signing a piece of people saying stuff like "We request and we demand...etc", but I don't really think that’ll make any difference.

Some thought of pressuring the landlord to acquire bigger generators to power up those AC units. It is still bearable at night, but during the day its like a friggen sauna.

Yours truly -typically thinking with the most scandalous agenda on mind- thought we should go to the press. Because paying an annual six digit figure for an average 2 bedroom apartment and NOT having utility services like, ummm.. Air Conditioning; could make a decent headline.
Especially when you are living a few meters away from the region's Technology Hub.

One guy thought of going to see the Rent Committee people in Dubai Municipality ... everyone laughed at that one!

I don't know guys.. What do you think we should do?

More updates

Hi ..

How you doin?

Long time no see.

I know .. sorry about that..


Things have been a bit crazy lately. I've been travelling a lot. I am in Doha at the moment, waiting for my EK back to Dubai.

Have lots of stories to tell. I still have one more week of work-related wackiness to go; so by mid March, I should be able to pick up whats left of my sanity.

So, whats going on?

At home, we are still without AC. The project engineer actually explained why is it we can't have DEWA hocked up till now. It turned out that it was all because of a "situation" DEWA people faced while trying to lay down the Main Power cable all the way from the main Generator to our building. While workers were digging away, they came across a construction site of which the contractor was being a major ASS about removing his junk to clear out the way for the DEWA guys to stretch the cable. He was being such a mutha about it to the point our building contractor called the cops. Anyhow, after several visits by DEWA people, police and a couple of warning letters, it was all cleared and we should, according to the project manager, be able to get DEWA, Etisalat and all that good stuff sometime toward the end of this week..... Lets see.

Lulu is officially walking. I can't describe to you the feeling just to see her wiggle her cute tush and her arms flying around everywhere. I miss her soo much.

As I said earlier, work has been really crazy. Everybody who is somebody in the company decided to drop in Dubai this week. And Yours Truly was assigned to look after their agendas, needs and egos. Not only that, they are moving around all over the place and I have to tag along. Bottom line; I ended up visiting 3 different countries 5 times over a period of 10 days. I still have a couple of more cities to cover. It should be over soon.

Also, there has been some internal movements at work as well. Its seems that some big Kahuna in Corp noticed that Yours Truly gotz some skillz, so he wants me to have a bigger role, wider goe-coverage responsibility and - dig this- wants Yours Truly to report directly to him.

Now, here is where it gets a bit tricky. It is the same Kahuna who my direct manager reports to. I don't know how that will make him feel, but I can feel that the love is NOT in the air.

Remember "C"? Well, she actually resigned and is on her way to a more "recognising" job. So, my boss already lost one good member of his team and another one is being snatched away.

I don't know. Lets hope i don't get caught in the middle of inter-office politics mambo jumbo.

I've been to Jordan last week. Spent a few days there. Though I really wanted to, but I couldn't go to Amman. I really wanted to meet up with some friends there. I feel bad. I hope I can make it up on my next trip. Anyhow, more photos/posts will be dedicated to Jordan.

Doha is an interesting place. I have mixed feelings about this place. I will try to be as objective as I can be. Again, more dedicated Qatar-posts should be coming your way.

I hope I can get Internet at home soon, so that i can resume normal blogging.

Miss you all ..

Living in the village

This is our 3rd week since we moved back to Dubai to a brand new overpriced apartment in what is supposed to be a "decent" residential area.

Let me just say that since the last time I used to lived in Dubai (that's about 5 years ago), things have changed here a bit, A LOT actually.

Everything is far more expensive and everyone is far less effective.

For starters, I've always seen myself as an accommodating person. I am not into micro picking on things; but dig this:

We still do not have any AC, the entire building is living on generators, we don't have any kind of cable TV service, Etisalat is taking its sweet time to hock up the building with any kind of connectivity options. Thank god for GPRS, oh but wait, Etisalat's coverage is only possible in some parts of the living room.. no where else. 60 fully occupied apartments are running on one elevator, garbage chute is not working yet and of course all the "facilities" that we were promised with are still 'work-in-progress'.

I will keep the gory details of the finishing (tiles, walls, plumbing) to myself.

Everyday, the landlord -and anyone associated to him for that matter- receives a barrage of angry phone calls from tenants asking why the hell is the delay and why does it feel like living in a village and paying over $3700 a month for it.. I can't blame them.

I, on the other hand, am still trying to find a way to get on the landlords good side to see if we can get an extra parking space.. The thing is, I counted the parking spaces below in the B level, and they less than the total number of housing units. Some residents will end up park their cars outside.

Oh well.. maybe above can give you an explanation to the 'activity downtime' on this blog. My only option is to blog from work, which I rather not to.

Miss you all

Mory

New home update

Sorry for being MIA for a while, but I've been extremely busy moving homes bouncing around between Dubai and Sharjah. I am officially out of Sharjah and back to Dubai again...... At last!

So, whats been going on in the past few days...

Movers
The movers i commissioned were average, but not that great i am afraid - (NZM: your guy never called again). The reason they were average is that didn't do much unpacking. I found out that they left behind a couple of kitchen cupboards back in Sharjah that they didn't even pack.

Our master bed room suffered a series of multiple and quite visible scratches and dings. A number of other items were dragged and scratched as well

But, the workers were on time, quick and very polite. They worked hard. There work did cause damage, but i think it could've been a lot worse. So, I bought them dinner and tipped them about Dhs 50 each.. they were like 6 or 7.

Oh well..


New House
After 5 agonizing years of living under a basketball-loving-stomp-dancing-wall-drilling-door-slamming mutha, we decided to take the largest apartment on the top floor (6th. floor) where I knew, for a fact, that there won't be anyone above me causing any noises or something.

Well, I was wrong. I found out a couple of days back that the landlord thought that the party halls on the rooftops are better off (more profitable) turned into flat studios. So, they last minute civil works are still on and the banging starts at 7 am everyday.. Hopefully that should stop toward the end of the month.

Thanks to DEWA (Dubai Electricity & Water Authority), we still have no AC. It seems that there is enormous demand for DEWA's services because of all the buildings that are popping up everywhere in this area.

So, the landlord supplied power generators that are powering up the entire building. But can't do the ACs. Thankfully, that should be over in a couple of days AND the weather is actually OK. So, we are good.

Again, due to the DEWA thing, one of the two elevators is operational. But we do have an elevator boy (who is paid by the contractor). Its nice to have someone to hold the elevator for you when you are loading/unloading stuff on your own.

There are still a few snag items here and there that need to be sorted out in the new house. I am working on them..

I am not sure about car park availability for of our cars, thought we took the largest flat in the building, we may end up with a single car park. I am actually trying to find a "persuasive incentive" for someone in the landlord office to give us a couple of spaces in the basement - wish me luck :)

I still have A LOT of unpacking, trashing-of-unwanted-things, mounting, racking, shelving, boxing, drilling, cutting, storing, dumping and so forth. Bottom line is, I NEVER realised how much junk I have..

I am so glad I am out of Sharjah ... Its about time.

Question - Landlord

I found out today that the landlord of our new apartment in Dubai gets to keep a spare key of our front door. I know its morally wrong .. but is it legal, anyone?