Buckets

I have two buckets, one for money and one for BS. When either one is full it's time to leave.

Guess which one of my buckets is full...

Boredom, heat, Runescape and pre-historic AC

Yes, it's hot now. The ACs are humming away, blowing their slightly chilled dirty air into my home. My son finds it too hot to play outside so he's hiding in some virtual world called 'Runescape' where the temperature isn't so fierce. I'm in limbo waiting to hear from various people about our coming and going procedures and I have just found out that I can't get hold of our three years prize money until I've cleared the car loan....oh dear.

I also hate my landlord. Thanks to him we have pre historic air con units that really should be sitting in the zaballah. He won't replace them, instead he sends round men to do 'bodge jobs' so they run for a few more weeks. When I say run, I mean they switch on and blow slightly cooled air into the house while racking up an electricity bill the size of the GDP of a small developing nation because they are so damn inefficient and old.
















Photo Credit: The Al Ain Air Con Museum

Tolerance

Excuse the lack of blogging recently, it's been a tough couple of weeks since my return to Al Ain. When things are bad I blog about soya protein..

Everyone seems damn miserable here in AA at the moment. Call it the post festive blues, call it what you want but I don't know a single happy soul in this city right now. Maybe I mixing with the wrong crowd or maybe everyone has a good reason to be so glum.

I have come to the conclusion that happiness here is directly connected with tolerance. Tolerance is usually seen as a positive thing but taken too far, it can lead to masochism. People are usually so proud of how much they can tolerate that they stop being able to see when people are taking the p***. My happiness began to decrease with my tolerance. For example: when seeing the condition of the labourers here, when a colleague and friend was sacked for no reason without appeal, when people die in car accidents yet THOSE WHO SURVIVE* continue to drive recklessly/wrecklessly and without seatbelts, when animals are abused for fun; just a few examples. When I could no longer turn a blind eye to these things, no longer be tolerant, I became unhappy.

Is it good to turn a blind eye for the sake of personal happiness?


* for the benefit of Anonymous at 9.22 pm so there is no misunderstanding.

The Brain Drain of Al Ain

In fact, it is the same ego that when offering a prospective employee a salary and benefits package, there is the air of "TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT". (That is another story entirely that is going to come crashing down on the UAE...it's called the brain drain.)

Says Dubai Bigus in a post about consumer rights in the UAE. It's interesting that they've mentioned the 'brain drain' that's going on, because living in Al Ain and knowing many academics (UAEU/HCT) and doctors (Tawam) that work here, I know exactly what they're talking about.

I remember once upon a time there was a brain drain in the UK. Academics with the ink still drying on their PhD certificates would say goodbye to their Alma Mater and head for pastures foreign to earn much more that they could in the motherland. One such country to benefit was the UAE. The UAE got wise to this and decided that it wouldn't take much of an incentive to get the brains to come to the country; maybe free housing would do it, no need to raise the salary because it was tax free anyway. As we all know, the stream of western academics wanting to come to the UAE is endless, right? You can raise their living standards a tinsy bit more than what they would have back home and they'd all come running, right?

Wrong. People are getting fed up. They were fed on the promise of a 15% pay rise. It never came. Rumours spread that the cost of living was going to rise, that came.

The result is that it seems half of Al Ain is packing up and going home this summer. Which leaves what? A few die-hards that are committed to health care and education in this country and the rest who couldn't get out this year but are trying for the next.

You pay people a good salary and they will stay and work their b***s off. You keep chipping away at people's benefits and they will leave. Then who will heal the sick and teach the young?

I feel like this right now

Khaleej Times Online: "“Until half a decade back, the saving grace of working in Gulf countries was a fat bank balance at the end of your tenure here. People held that financial security in the form of some hundred thousands stacked away as savings compensated for what you endure here, with loved ones back home. But now keeping apart a few dirhams is a distant dream for many as it is a hand to mouth existence for many middle class families and individuals,” noted long timers in the UAE like Abdul Latif and Ramachandran Nair. And they do it at a price; failing mental and physical fitness."

Anyone else feel as if it's really not worth being out here anymore?