"After tomorrow"

When the Fiance of the Blog and I were in India, we encountered an interesting linguistic phenomenon: In Hindi--at least in the part of the country we visited--the words for "tomorrow" and "yesterday" were identical. Hmmm. That's leaning awfully hard on context, isn't it? And as you might imagine, this non-distinction played out in real life, too, as "wait a half-hour" usually became "we just waited five hours."

Well. In Abu Dhabi there is a similar phenomenon. If someone says to you that X or Y will happen "after tomorrow," it doesn't mean it will happen two days from then. No. It is literal. X or Y will definitely take place... some undefined time in the future. All that is certain is that it won't happen tomorrow.

As I type this, it is about 11:15 a.m. in the newsroom. I was told Thursday to show up Sunday at 9:30 and a car would take me to get fingerprinted. On Sunday I was told "tomorrow." Now it's Tuesday, and my 9:30 car ride got postponed to 11... and then 11:30.

Fortunately the coffee guys are working full force this morning.

Edit to add: Now it's "noon" and "why don't you give me your mobile number and we'll call you."

Several hours after "after tomorrow"

That's when my stove arrived. Shockingly, the driver had a hard time finding my apartment. I wonder what could help with that... oh, I know, ADDRESSES.

A brief recreation of the conversation, which, by the way, occurred as I was walking to work two hours after they were supposed to deliver the thing.

DRIVER
Mr. Matthew?

ME
Yes?

DRIVER
We are from Carrefour. We are coming with your cooker.

ME
OK....

DRIVER
What is your address?

I mentally bang my head against a mental wall. I know how this conversation is going to go.

ME
It is the Budget building. In Tankar Mai.

DRIVER
Dubai!?

ME
No. Tankar Mai. The neighborhood in Abu Dhabi.

DRIVER
Near Delma Street?

ME
Yes, near Delma Street. By Muroor Road. If you are going toward airport on Muroor, turn right on 15th, then right, then go to Spike of Prosperity.

DRIVER
Muroor?

ME
OK, if you are going toward airport, Budget building is on your right.

DRIVER
OK, no problem, turn right on Muroor. (hangs up)

25 minutes later, totally unsurprised to find myself still alone, I hit redial.

ME
It's Mr. Matthew. You have my cooker? Where are...

DRIVER
Yes, sir, looking for parking.

About 10 minutes after THAT, a guy appears down the block wheeling a large cardboard box on a dolly. The part of the box labeled "this side up" is quite clearly facing down. I have no idea where they put their truck, but I hope it wasn't Dubai.

Anyway, the end result was this:

Shiny, new, and ideally not leaking any gas.

A small victory. But a victory that will cook food. And now this chapter of my life can come to a close, at least until I attempt to make something in the oven. Which I am planning to do after tomorrow.

"After tomorrow," redux

So the guy sitting next to me, we'll call him "Karl," just received a surprise package in the mail today. From his bank. It was a checkbook (or "chequebooque," as the British call them) that had been promised to him a while back. How far back? He was told "after tomorrow" approximately 75 after tomorrows ago.

Meanwhile, despite being an officially recognized worker here, with papers and clear chest X-rays and everything, I still don't have online access to my bank account. Which makes details like "paying bills" and "knowing how much money I have" a bit of a hassle.

Too many air quotes in this post.

On the plus side, I pays my money and I goes to the gym today, got a good workout, did some math in my head by converting kilogram dumbbells to pounds and crashed the pool. Findings from this pool visit: 20 minutes in the sun=no sunburn, and poolside tiles will melt the soles of your feet if you stand still. The water was perfect, though.

The continuing adventures of Etisalat

You've heard this story before.

But this time, with failure has come some small measure of success. No, it doesn't make sense, and no, it doesn't solve my problem immediately... but at least I got someone to explain what exactly has to be done to upgrade my Internet service.

The whole thing will take about three days (I figure five) and will necessitate the Mr. and Mrs. Blog household returning to Stone Age 2mbps speeds for that period. Why? That is the only way to cancel the "promotional" nature of our current speed--a promotion that the customer service guy admits actually ran out in December.

I had my hopes up that it would get done last night when I dropped by the unfortunately familiar Airport Road office--he stamped my form and took my ID and everything--but in the end, there was no joy. At least not until after tomorrow.

*Bonus round: I have been e-mailing the company's customer "care" address once a week since this issue began, without any response... until last night. Maybe, just maybe, after tomorrow will come faster than I think. It's OK to dream, right?

Vroom

And so it was that yesterday--Happy Halloween, by the way--Mrs. Blog and I headed to the race track for the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Our first impression: It seemed kind of unfinished. Lots of roads to nowhere, gravel instead of sidewalk and newly planted vegetation. But our shuttle bus dropped us off exactly where we needed to go, and we headed inside.

Our second impression: F-1 cars are LOUD. And high-pitched. A knowledgeable co-worker told me the engines run at about 18,000 rpm, which is ridiculous. And loud. Did I mention loud? Fortunately they handed out earplugs at the door.

We were close to the track, but not this close.

But despite the brutal power of the F-1 cars, impressive enough in its own right, I guess, the qualifying laps, Saturday's main event, just weren't that interesting. Probably because we had very little clue what was going on. An example: At the end of the last qualifying round, a car crossed the finish line and the stands erupted in cheers. Mrs. Blog and I looked at each other. Shrugged. And later learned that the pole had just been won in some extremely cunning fashion. Okeydoke.

The undercard race, a bunch of souped-up Porsche 911s, was much more interesting. And since our seats in the South Grandstand were right at the end of a long straightaway, we got to witness some jostling for position and spinning out. Good times.

Actual racing.

Outside of the cars going fast--and the beautiful company and weather--I have to say that I was underwhelmed by the track experience. The food wasn't great, but whatever... it's stadium food. Beer, though, you could only drink in the beer tent. Not in the stands. And there was a line several hours long to get into the aforementioned tent. And although there were volunteers all over the place, the operation wasn't very organized.

This was most evident after the post-race Kings of Leon show (which was great, and pictures of which I will post as soon as I have them in hand). There was a massive herd of buses waiting to take people away from Ferrari World, where the concert was staged.

But the vast majority of the buses, at least when we came out, were empty and not moving because they were lined up in a single-lane parking area. The buses we needed to get on were all the way back by where we had entered the track--maybe a mile from the concert venue--so we shrugged and instead of waiting on a bus for an hour we went to a nearby hotel for a cocktail.

And then, after paying a stranger to cart seven expats to Abu Dhabi in his shiny new Tahoe, we retired. Today we will watch the actual race on TV.  And tomorrow Abu Dhabi will return to normal.

Or maybe after tomorrow.

Fury, success, redemption

Ah, dear readers, it has been an interesting day. Many things have to be accomplished before I hop on a government-owned airliner and begin my 23-hour sojourn back to a magical Place Where Water Falls From the Sky.

Among them was getting Internet set up in my apartment. And not even set up--just switched from my roommate's name to mine. On Sunday, we went down to the Etisalat office, filled out some paperwork, waited in a bunch of different lines... an then learned that there was a problem with the system and the switch couldn't be made right then. Instead, they would call me when the paperwork went through, I would go back down there and we would sort it all out over coffee.

"After tomorrow." Sounds familiar, right?

Yesterday I called and was told that the paperwork we had filed didn't exist. Awesome. Today I went down to the office and spoke with the clerk who helped us the most the first time around. He told me the request couldn't be processed because of "big problems" in the system. But seeing the fury (or hopelessness?) in my eyes, he kicked me upstairs to someone else. I handed him the paper work--which, it turns out, did exist--and after reading it, he said, and I quote: "What did that guy tell you?"

Not promising. But after getting bounced to a different counter, I finally got an answer that made sense. There was a fee to pay to transfer the account. No one had collected this fee. Therefore, the service couldn't be transferred. Dirhams paid, I walked out of the building an official Etisalat customer.

Next came the post office. I don't have a great track record there. Sure, there aren't many data points, but the last time I tried to pick up a package, it did not go smoothly.

This time, though, all kinds of good things happened. First of all, my UAE driver's license worked perfectly as ID. Which is great, because it means my passport can stay in a happy, safe place. Second, they found the package fast and brought it to me. Third, they didn't try to charge me anything to take it away. And fourth, the customs guy doing the customary "is someone trying to mail you porn?" search was in good spirits.

CUSTOMS GUY
(pulls a pack of playing cards with cocktail recipes out of the box) Cards. For magic tricks?

ME
Ha. Uh, yes. Magic tricks.

And then comes the best part. Waiting in the 115-degree sun for a taxi was brutal. All of them had passengers or only wanted to take me to Musaffah, which, unfortunately for both of us, wasn't where I wanted to go. Just as I'm considering getting on the next bus I see, giant package and all, a taxi with a passenger pulls up and honks at me.

It's Kamal. He's the cab driver I have on my cell phone--a number stolen shamelessly from my Scottish friends--to call when I need an arranged ride. But the last time I called him, he just didn't show up. I thought that was it. And yet here he is, rolling up just when I needed him.

The end result? A free ride home--he refused my money--and arrangements to take me to the airport on Friday morning.

Sometimes things work out despite all the sweat, bureaucracy and giant blocks of text on a blog.

Following up my customer service call

So tonight, Etisalat and I danced some more.

It was not a beautiful dance. Elbows were thrown, toes were trod on. I think Etisalat might be hearing a totally different song than I am. And so on.

Basically, our Internet has X bandwidth. I want to up that to 2X. This should be a relatively simple procedure, considering it involves a customer (me) wanting to give a company (Etisalat) more of my dirhams. And yet. Oh, and yet.

I tried to upgrade in person last week and was told, after more than an hour of waiting in line, that the system was down and I'd have to come back later. (I have since realized that this is actually code for, "something unexpected has happened that I don't quite know how to solve, so I'm just going to pretend it's out of my hands.") OK. The next step was to call the company's "customer service" phone number, which I had used to upgrade our service the last time. I went through several operators before I finally got someone who said they could help me.

Oh, and as an aside--Etisalat, if you're reading this? Calling your number, then hitting 2-2-2 on the following menu does not get you to the sales department. It gets you to the e-Vision service department, who are not only unwilling to help a poor Al Shamil customer with his account, but apparently lack the capability to transfer a phone call. The only way to actually get to the sales department is to punch 2 (for English), 2 (for "other services") and 3 (for Internet), and hope your call is randomly picked up by the sales department. I will bet you every red dirham in my wallet that this is the case.

Anyway. The first person who said they were able to help me tried to upgrade the account, then told me that I could not upgrade over the phone. I needed to go to the Etisalat office. Well, fine. But I wasn't about to give up the telephonic fix so quickly. I called right back an got a different representative, who turned out to be the second-most helpful Etisalat employee I had ever encountered. He understood exactly what I wanted... tried to make it work... and apologized when he couldn't. He said there was a glitch in the system, and that he couldn't resolve it over the phone. I would have to go to... well, you know how this goes.

That brings us up to speed. Tonight I went to Etisalat. Not much of a wait at 7 p.m., which is good. The guy at my counter took my upgrade form, typed some stuff, took my ID, then asked me how long my account had been operational. Not a good sign. In fact, at that point, I was considering anything other than "It's done, sir," to be a bad sign. He sent me to his supervisor, a guy at a different counter, who typed some more, frowned at his screen, then said, "Is not possible, sir."

"What?" I asked.

"Your current speed is a promotion. You cannot upgrade. You must downgrade first."

Yeah. That's right. Apparently our current service, which we pay through the nose for, was a promotion. (I had no idea this was the case) And that, in turn, means that not only can I not change the account over the phone, but I can't change it AT ALL without downgrading to the speed I had before... four times less bandwidth. For crying out loud.

I saw a workaround. "Can you just downgrade me now, then upgrade me to the new service?" I asked.

No. Of course not. I had to wait for the lower speed to kick in--"after tomorrow," he said--and then go back to upgrade it. So four days of impossibly slow internet, then maybe I can upgrade. Assuming the system will work the way it's supposed to.

But, he said, maybe I could call customer service and they could fix it for me. But the best bet, he said, was to just keep the service I had now. "It is good," he said.

That's right. THEY DIDN'T WANT MY MONEY. Someone explain this to me. I left under a cloud of equal parts confusion, anger and despondence.

The epilogue is that I DID call customer service again, and after several tries got the right person on the line. He turned out to be the most helpful and, bonus points, apologetic(!) Etisalat worker ever. He tried the upgrade. Of course it failed. He saw it was a glitch. He said, "Everything is fine with your account. There is no reason it can't be upgraded. But the computer won't let me. I am so sorry, sir." And then, I swear, he said, "Please do not be angry."

A little contrition goes a long way. I wasn't angry, at least not at him. I don't really have a solution either, though. I'm open to suggestions.

Unless, of course, you work for Etisalat. In which case, all I ask is that you manage not to screw anything else up until I figure out how to help you do your own job in the way you're supposed to.

The plot thickens

And by plot I mean sandstorm.

Air so thick you could cut it with a shovel.

The grit was definitely more noticeable in my mouth, too. Coming out of the gym I almost wanted to cover my face with my shirt. By comparison:

Friday: tall buildings still visible.

But hey, I'm not going to let the sand defeat me. I set out, sheaf of bureaucracy in hand, to get my driver's license. Somewhat ironically, there is no easily discernible address for the Traffic and Licensing Department. Somewhat fortunately, I ran into a kind and helpful Co-Worker of the Blog who not only had her driver's license, but was on her way to Dubai--she offered to drop me off at the correct office.

And so she did. But it was closed, despite assurances to the contrary on the Police Department website. The result, of course, is that I will be getting my license (say it with me!) after tomorrow.

The IHT is dead--long live the IHT

Hello, readers. It has, once again, been too long since I've typed at you about bloggy things. The reason--honest--is that it has been busy times here at my desk in Hong Kong. Tomorrow, the International Herald Tribune becomes the International New York Times after being identified for years as "the global edition of the New York Times."

I didn't know a ton about the IHT before I moved overseas. But it's a name with a lot of history.

And more than that, it's a name you kind of expect to see in a sweltering hotel lobby in Hanoi or laid out among morning tea in Delhi. An expat fixture, in other words.

A famous guy reading a famous paper in a famous place.

So there are many arguments to be had over what's in a name (and there is an incredible retrospective here). But regardless of all that, it is a bit sad to see an element of old-school expat life disappear. See you in the funny papers, IHT....

STS-1, or Gerry's First Space Memory

The Space Shuttle Discovery heads into orbit for the last time tomorrow, assuming the weather holds. It will mark the last of 135 Shuttle missions, the first of which was in 1981.

That was a remarkable flight in many ways. It was the first--and only--time the U.S. had sent a manned space vehicle on its maiden flight with a crew in it. That's right, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo... all those capsules orbited empty a few times to work out the kinks before we loaded them with pilots.

So this was a huge risk, tossing a totally new system into space after rigorous atmospheric testing but with only computer modeling to tell us how it would hold up in a vacuum... or more important, in the hellish conditions of re-entry.

Columbia had ejection seats, a feature that was later removed. Its external fuel tank was painted white to match the rest of the vehicle stack, a decision that also lasted only a few flights because the paint added 600 pounds to its launch weight. It was a test flight, and the entire world was watching.



Looked smooth, right? But this checkride definitely discovered some problems. The most serious--the "overpressure" wave from the ignition of the solid rocket boosters damaged the rear of the shuttle at launch--could have doomed the mission. But engineers used the data from that first blastoff to improve the water sound suppression system and prevent that danger in future flights.

Of course, five-year-old me didn't really see it that way. I just saw a rocket, a graceful piece of machinery, head up into the unknown. That sight has never stopped inspiring me. And it will be sad to see it for the last time.

This is what hypersonic looks like

Or, The Failed Test of Today; the Cutting-Edge Technology of Tomorrow.

I spotted this on Ares Defense Blog: a video of the hypersonic technology demonstrator launched (and lost) by DARPA a few weeks ago. The HTV-2 was exploring new realms of high-speed aeronautics when it disappeared somewhere between its California launch site and intended South Pacific target.

It is designed to hit a football field-sized target anywhere on the globe within an hour, and cause catastrophic damage simply because of its mass and speed. The speed, of course, is really the crucial factor. It was traveling about Mach 20 when it passed over this observer:

This might be fascinating only to me. But I have often wondered what something going that

fast looks like from the ground. The answer, apparently, is "a lot like a high-altitude airplane." If you don't know how high it is, it looks like it is moving at a reasonable pace.

For comparison, here is what Mach 10 looks like up close (the speed this '60s-vintage anti-ballistic missile LINK hits after about one second):

As I mentioned before, I hope they continue working on this program. Pushing for new technology has benefits outside the weapons world, and if air transportation is going to advance beyond where subsonic airliners have taken it, more stuff like this has to happen. Even if all they get out of it is some data and a glittering failure caught on camera.