This coming Friday I am going to participate in one of the most popular expat activities this country has to offer, the visa run. At first you may think I’m talking about an organized group running event down the Cornish of Abu Dhabi, the entry fees of which might go to some worthy charity. But this is not an aerobic sports run, it’s even more exciting than that.

Visa Stamps

You see, when you arrive in the UAE, you get a little stamp in your passport that allows you to stay in the country for 30 days and in some circumstances, up to 60 days. This is usually plenty of time for most tourists to come, enjoy a little vacation time and go home with a minimum of paperwork to be legal staying here.

If you come here to work, your company gives you a work visa which then allows you to apply for residency, then eliminating the need for the border stamps. These are things that aren’t necessarily possible to do in 30 days. Having spent 10 years in Portugal and seen first hand how second and third world countries operate, I seriously doubted that this can be accomplished in several months. My suspicions were confirmed shortly after starting work as most of my colleagues have spent up to a year getting these two critical documents in hand.

Running Man

So what happens as your 30 day tourist stamp comes close to expiring? The Visa run! To remain legal in the country, you have to leave the country and then return. That means crossing the border, then turning around and coming back, gaining a new 30 day stamp in your passport, or flying out to some other country, turning around and coming back into the UAE. This event is practiced every day by hundreds of expats waiting for their work documents to come through.

Great, I say. A chance to get away for the weekend to some nearby culturally significant tourist destination. But every 30 days? For possibly an entire year?

Welcome to the Visa run racket. A million dollar plus industry that has created relatively cheap turnaround airline flights to keep you legal in this country every 30 days. You fly out and back into the UAE in just one day, get your stamp and go back to work the next day.

I chose to fly to Oman this Friday, my day off, so I won’t miss work. Trouble is that the flight leaves at 3AM and I get back to Dubai 10 AM. I don’t think there will be much to do in the Muskat airport when I land at 4AM. What a waste of time and an entire day.

Original article here.

Mariam Yammahi has three children. Two have genetic abnormalities.  “I would never allow my child to marry a first cousin,” she says. “Not after what has happened to me.”

When Cousins Marry

Mrs Yammahi, 26, is from a traditional family in Fujairah. Eight years ago, she and her prospective husband, her first cousin, were screened for the most common genetic diseases at the Thalassaemia Centre in Dubai.

Her first son, Abdulaziz, now seven, was born with a condition that remains unnamed. Among his ailments are an enlarged head with dangerous water retention. He also has congenital heart disease and had to have surgery for a hole in his heart. He cannot walk and his speech is only just developing.

Although she expected further complications with her second child, she was born healthy and is now five. It was her youngest, Sara, now three, who would be born with the same condition as her brother. She is deaf and refuses to use a hearing aid, which has resulted in impaired speech.

The children of Mrs Yammahi’s second cousin have the same condition, as do three of Mrs Yammahi’s cousins. It is probably no coincidence that they all married cousins.

The tradition, she says, is more common in more rural areas, such as Fujairah, and her new home, Al Ain, where she moved to study computer engineering at UAE University.

No all traditions, even legal ones here, are necessarily good ones.

Al Bidyah Mosque

On my trek to the east coast of the UAE a few weeks ago with my friend Richard, we stopped by the Al Bidyah Mosque near Fujairah. This is the oldest known mosque on the Arabian peninsula and dates back to the early 1400′s. It’s architecture is unique as it consists of four pointed domes and is still in use as you can see by the photos.

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No shoes allowed.

We happened to arrive at prayer time and weren’t sure if the mosque isn’t open to the public outside prayer time or not. Needless to say we did not go in. There is a small castle above the mosque from where I took the last photograph of the tower below.

Tower above Al Bidyah Mosque

I named this bull Mr. T.

Who says there’s nothing to to on a Friday afternoon in the UAE? I was cruising the east coast of the UAE with my friend Richard about two weeks ago when we came across what seemed like an open field surrounded by hundreds of people peering into a small arena. At first I thought we came upon a small local camel race but upon exiting the car and walking over, noticed several bulls tied up along the perimeter of the fenced in field.

Bloodless bullfights

Welcome to the UAE’s version of bullfighting. Before you get upset, you have to realize that here the bull does not get killed, nor is it injured in any way. This is an actual bull fight. Two bulls are brought into the arena and they “fight” by facing each other, locking horns and PUSHING. It’s sort of a push-of -war, the bull who causes the other to back up wins. Or so it seems. There is a referee who decides who is declared the winner and keeps the bulls facing each other.

Spectators with a deathwish.

Most of the spectators are safely outside the fence, but a collection of spectators (VIP’s, bull owners, daredevils?) are sitting in the arena a few feet from the fighting bulls. The most entertaining part of the afternoon was watching these internal spectators scramble when the bulls got too close or when one got free from it’s restraints and charged the crowd.

Butt Sweet House

Local Abu Dhabi restaurant.

New Business Card

My new business cards arrived today. I’ve been waiting for these in antipication as I need to get out into the community and start handing these out. You know, networking. My friends and family have been asking where I work and how to get in touch with me, and I have to admit, it’s beed so busy, I haven’t had time to get back to them.  Now they have all the details to either call me on the telephone or write me a letter. One more thing off my “to do” list.

Check out the logo.

I saw this on my way to work this morning.  Apparently this clinic is expanding its services to include in vivo fertilization.

Maybe it’s just me, but it really irritates me when people of English speaking nationalities make no attempt to speak the local language properly when living in a country foreign to them. I can understand tourists making mistakes, and will allow newly arrived expats a grace period of about a year, but the video depictred here really rubs me the wrong way.

The fantastically clean and efficient national metro system in Dubai announces your next stop in both Arabic and English. For all the millions of Euros it cost to build this transportation system, you would think they could have hired a professional announcer who could take the time to learn how to pronounce the Arabic words.

By the way, Deira is pronounced “Day-rah” and not “Deer-Rah”.

Living in Portugal for 9 years sensitized me to this seemingly blatant disrgard for local customs where the local language is admittedly difficult to pronounce, but do-able if you give it a little effort. Expats we know living there for decades still butcher the local language to such a degree, it’s almost comical. But I can’t help feeling it’s a disregard for the people and culture of the place they have been caling their home for years.

Now I’m off to find where I can take lessons in learning Arabic.

Today was my first day back at work after 5 months off. After 31 years of doing what I do best, I thought I would just ease back into cruise control. Unfortunately, I am working in a new clinic and everything is different. I feel like I’ve just rented a new car at night.

Have you ever has this happen to you? You are on vacation or a trip out of town and arrive to your destination by air. It’s night time and you have to get to the rental car kiosk to pick up the car you have reserved ahead of time. Once checked in the attendant behind the counter gives you your keys and you’re off through the rental car parking lot looking for the numbered space that your car occupies. After walking for what seems an inconvenient amount of time, you find yourself at the far end of the lot, almost to where the asphalt ends, in front of your car, which seems much smaller than the one depicted on the website when you chose it on line. Your just out of range of the last halogen street light which has 99% of all the other cars lit up like the playing field at a Monday Night Football game. Although you can barely make out the number spray painted on the parking space, you confirm that it is, in fact, your car when you press the button your key ring and your car comes to life with an audible chirp and a flashing of the brake lights. Exhausted from the flight and knowing that you only have a little more driving time to make it to your destination, you somehow find a burst of energy that feels like enough to get you into the soft bed awaiting you down the road. You toss you luggage into the trunk that conveniently popped open when you initially pushed the wrong button when trying to unlock the car and quickly slide behind the drivers seat and close the door.

Driving at Night

Total darkness engulfs you. You attempt to place the key into the ignition but find through tactile sensory input that you have inserted your keys, instead, into the air conditioning vent by mistake. Who moved the ignition switch? Oh yeah, it’s not your car. It’s different. Proving that your college education was worth something after all, you problem solve this situation by opening the door, causing the dome light to come on, revealing the position of the now obvious ignition switch.

Car started and headlights on, you buckle in and close the door only to find that the well lit instrument panel that somehow makes you feel like you are in an airplane cockpit, gives you absolutely no clue as to the location of other critical items that need to be manipulated in order to get you on your way. Things like parking brakes, turn signals, side mirror adjustment knobs, door locks and the air conditioning controls are curiously unidentifiable when attempting to identify them by Braille. Add to that scenario the fact that you are too proud to spend five minutes learning where these things are before driving off and decide to figure this out as you go along, driving down the road in an unfamiliar town where you need 100% of your brain power just to get lost.

Telltale signs of driving a new car at night are; windshield wipers operating when it isn’t raining, driving on parking lights or no lights at all or emergency flashers, power windows down on a freezing cold night with classical music blaring at rap music volume, the tell tale smell of burning parking brakes that are still set and either the hood or trunk bobbing ajar.

Six to a room.

I thought it would be a romantic touch to B’s birthday celebration to take the train overnight to Vienna, where we were to meet up with good friends who live there. Therefore we flew into Geneva, Switzerland the afternoon before and immediately went to the train station, which is a grueling 100 meter walk from the airport, to purchase tickets. We tried to purchase these tickets on line a few days before but couldn’t navigate around the complicated website. The nice gentleman at the ticket counter was very good at his job and knew exactly what lines we should travel on and what stations to make the proper transfers that allowed two people enjoying the second half of their lives enough time to wheel three large suitcases to the next platform. We were told that we were the only two in our sleeping berths, which I assumed meant we were paying for a two berth sleeping quarter.

Surprise! We had mistakenly booked a six person berth complete with four new friends. Each sleeping berth was smaller than a coffin and too short for my legs. As it turns out, we couldn’t have asked for nicer bunkmates. These four young people were all attending a hospitality and hotel management college in Switzerland. One was from Viet Nam, one from Taiwan and two from India.

Bed and Breakfast - Literally

The cramped quarters didn’t allow us a very good night’s sleep but the adventure of talking to these kids from all over the world, was worth it.