Brown remembered hills

"Mr Goat, you used to live in Doha, didn't you?"

"Yes, but why do you suddenly ask, right out of the blue, Mr Boss?"

"We need someone to go for a couple of days. It's urgent; it's at the drop of a hat, and you have been selected from a host of applicant."

And so it was on Tuesday morning when the alarm went off at an appallingly uncivilised 04:30. I have long regarded the alarm clock springing into action when the hour hand is on the right-hand side of the clock face as being a violation of the natural order of things. I mean, it was still as dark outside as when I went to bed. But such early starts are a necessary evil when the budget airline Fly Dubai is going to leave DXB Terminal 2 at half last seven.

Beloved wife kindly dropped me off at the airport, and with no fuss at all I was in Doha, having apparently taken no time at all. The aircraft disgorged its two hundred or so business executives into the waiting bus, and we all spent the next 20 minutes trundling around the perimeter of Doha International Airport. I've heard it said that DOH has one of the longest runways in the world; such a pity that the bus driver didn't take the shorter route.

As usual it was Karma Sutra Passport Control. Sixteen positions, but only a couple of them actually worked. A further half an hour later - and I was in the first dozen in the queue - I escaped and found my lift. The driver had grown a beard and turned grey while waiting but hadn't actually died of old age.

What I was doing in Doha involved driving all over town, and this was the reason why I'd been picked. Someone who'd lived there for several years might easily find his way around without becoming horribly lost.

Best-laid plans, unfortunately. Since my previous visit in 2006 there has been a lot of construction, some major roads are completely upgraded, and other major interchanges are under construction. In keeping with normal custom and practice, the traffic management for junctions under construction is to block all approaches and provide "Road Closed. U-Turn Only" signs. How helpful.

Rumours exist concerning the reason why construction of three major interchanges in Doha has stopped. In brief, the rumour goes something like this: The Contractor wishes to be paid for the work he's done, and the Client (who indirectly has dollar bills pouring uncontrolled out of the Ras Laffan gas pipes) promises to pay once the work has been done. The Contractor has previously learned that statements to that effect are so much horse-hockey, and the result is a stalemate. Eventually of course, another Contractor will have to be appointed at much-increased cost in order to get the work finished. But as this new incumbent won't be paid either, then the Client will be able to keep his cash.

I was amazed to discover the extent of new building work in Doha. And how the Aladdin's Kingdom has been demolished - although the road signs pointing to it are still in place. So I never did get to ride on that roller coaster after all.

I noted how little some things have changed since my initial departure back in 2002. Side roads in residential areas still haven't seen any maintenance (no international media coverage of the grotty back streets, so it's not worth spending anything), soft landscaping of some schemes completed in 2003 or earlier remain unfinished, although others have been planted and watered so that they've become rainforests. Overall however, the place is dusty and brown, brown, brown.

The local driving style is still slower than in Dubai, but this is compensated for by the complete enthusiasm for filling every available square inch of asphalt, breakdown lane and verge. I was hooted at with full New York Nanosecond tolerance by drivers of Land Cruisers, Totota Echos, Mitsubishi pickups and trucks. Being regaled in this way might have been understandable if I'd failed to accelerate smartly from a green light, but this was while travelling along the highway at the speed limit!

On one memorable occasion I was physically forced off the road on to the gravel verge. Poised ready to remonstrate, it was startling to discover that the idiot delivery driver was in fact two uniformed Qatari police officers, neither of whom looked old enough to shave.

I had two long days of this sort of thing. At least I got to meet up with some old friends on Tuesday night for a beer or six before getting a lift (I don't drink and drive) back to the villa where I was staying overnight, way oop north near Umm S'lal Mohammed. The newly-finished villa was the last word in incompetent construction, with most lights not working upstairs, wall-banger aircons throughout except in the lounge where a split unit included hideous trunking all across one of the walls, leaky plumbing and wacky light switches. Why do they put the switches behind doors next to hinges? Why doesn't the carpenter simply hang the door the other way around? What's wrong with actually using that dormant organ between your ears?

On which subject, I failed to adjust the clock on my phone, which resulted in a 5am start on Wednesday rather than the marginally less unacceptable 6am.

The flight back to Dubai was uneventful. Unfortunately I got a "Maximum stay 30 days" stamp put in my passport despite my having presented it open at the UAE residence visa page. Somehow this then became my fault, as I queued behind half the population of Bangladesh in Terminal 2 until the Big Boss unlocked his safe and got hold of a red "Cancelled" stamp to put over the "30-days" bit.

So I got home at 2am on Thursday, was back in the office five hours later, and now one weekend after that I remain desperate for sleep.

Oh, blessed Morpheus...z.z.z.z.zzzz.

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Dubaisengard

Beloved Wife and I spotted this last weekend. The only clouds in the sky were over Business Bay, and Dubaisengard - the tallest free-standing structure on the planet until someone builds a bigger one - wasn't so much scraping the sky as piercing it.

Apologies for the quality of the image. I was driving, and the only available camera was attached to an ancient Nokia steam-powered telephone.

Before anyone asks, the phone cam was wielded by Beloved Wife from her vantage point in the Goatmobile's passenger seat.

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Death and taxes

These two things are certain, according to Daniel Defoe (1726) and Benjamin Franklin (1789). Well, putting death aside for the time being, I was somewhat irritated to encounter taxes on Monday.

In my previous blog I passed a comment that my motorbike was too quiet. The sewing-machine impression afforded by stock engine and exhaust lacks Presence, so I needed to do something about it. I canvassed opinion on a motorcycle forum and decided that several brands would be offensively loud and were rejected on that basis. "Which one is quietest?" was my fundamental question. What I have ended up with is a new stainless steel and carbon-fibre system that has been developed to maximise power without shaking every window in Mirdif or rattling the fillings out of the teeth of slugabeds when I set off in the early mornings.

I ordered the system from Area-P in California and it was duly despatched last Wednesday, courtesy of the United States Postal Service. Despite allegations that "The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke", the USPS managed to contrive to get my package to Sharjah by Monday morning. And the Emirates Postal Service got it into my hand by 5pm that same day.

I had to go to the Post Office to collect it, of course. After signing for the package, it was x-rayed and then opened - presumably to confirm that the x-ray machine wasn't lying - and at that point I was invited to pay import duty.

I was ready for this: 5% tax on the value of the goods. The trouble was that the nice customs gentlemen were adamant that the duty was payable on the entire cost, including postage and packing. Naturally I argued the toss. And then explained the problem to the next official up the chain. Why should I pay 5% of the value of services bought, paid for and utilised last week in California to the UAE government? The goods, yes. But surely not the carriage?

Eventually I was forced to pay my Dh40 over the odds in order to get my stuff. But I am not pleased. I'm convinced that this is a rip-off.

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Bird dog

A feature of living in Dubai is that the interesting, twisty roads are many miles away. Sure, there are plenty of ram-rod straight highways around the town. High speeds would be achievable were it not for the Road and Traffic Authority’s overindulgence in speed cameras. Actually, that last bit should read “...are achieved despite the Road and Traffic Authority’s overindulgence...” But not normally by me. I loathe and detest forking out my cash after having my number plate snapped, and have various methods for avoiding being photographed. Sticking to the speed limit is one (duh…) and another is resisting the temptation to gas past the car that moves over at last after holding me up for ages. Hinged or obscured number plates are of course terribly illegal, and that spray-on plate-obuscating stuff apparently doesn’t work.

Last Friday afternoon I went for a little bike ride. Beloved Wife was in Muscat for the weekend and I’d done as much laundry as I felt necessary. There were no changes to Facebook and I had received no new emails other than an amazing offer from a senior Nigerian government official involving his billions and my bank account.*

One feature of sports-touring motorcycles is that they’re typically both fast and comfortable. I had intended to whiz out to Kalba and back, but instead took a more scenic route into the mountains via Dhaid and Masafi. The Sharjah-Dhaid road wasn’t too busy; being Friday there were far fewer trucks on it than is usual during the week, and I made good headway. The Friday Market on the approach to Masafi was a seething mass of Land Cruisers, all crawling along the main road at walking pace. The occupants were presumably on the lookout for inflatable animals, animal-skin-print carpets, and potted plants. Clearing the market area, I hit Masafi roundabout and turned north.

More traffic congestion. I was surprised, frankly, how many cars there were and how slowly they were being driven for no apparent reason. The GTR’s engine was beginning to express its displeasure at this low-speed stuff by pumping boiling hot air all over my legs. The 1400GTR is famous for this trick, so much so that for 2010 Mr Kawasaki has completely redesigned the fairing to direct hot air away from the rider.

Anyway, once out of Masafi I was able to open the bike up a bit. All right, a lot. The road is a very scenic single carriageway, but you’ve gotta keep your eyes peeled for random speed humps and even more random donkeys and camels and goats (oh my!). I stopped for a water break and took a photo, and everyone I’d just overtaken drove past.


Dibba was quieter than Masafi, as I looped around the coast and headed south along the coast road past Al Aqah hotel and Snoopy Island. A few bikes went past in the other direction, but no-one else was apparently heading south on two wheels. Mid-afternoon in Khor Fakkan, and it seemed the world and his wife were promenading on the corniche, cruisin’ up and down the corniche road or possibly snacking on corniche pasties. Another session of hot legs for me then. The traffic was still busy south of Khor Fakkan into Murbah. I’m not sure what the guy in the black-windowed Lexus was trying to achieve by driving not six inches from my exhaust pipe in heavy traffic, but this is not an unknown phenomenon.

I headed south through Fujairah and Kalba until, at last, I could turn right and head west into the mountains. The bendy mountain road from Kalba to Shawka, is a great motorcycling favourite, twisting and turning up the mountainside, through a tunnel, down the other side and then repeat. It’s dual carriageway too, so there’s unlikely to be oncoming traffic. Care is nevertheless required. I have already mentioned donkeys and camels and goats (oh my!), and there is the additional risk of fallen rocks on the road or gravel washed from the mountain by recent rain. That black thing that went whizzing past you in almost total silence on the approach to Wadi Muddiq tunnel may have been me. If the pilot had his arse hanging off the seat and his knee scraping the asphalt it certainly wasn’t. Riding a tourer as if it’s a sports bike looks more than faintly ridiculous.

I enjoy bend-swinging, and the weight of my motorcycle seems to disappear, despite its huge size. As revealed in previous posts, I have lost a lot of my youthful bravado so I can’t (or at least don’t) lean over until the footpegs scrape the asphalt and the tyres are on the edges of their tread. “Ride where you’re comfortable. You’re s’posed to be enjoying yourself.”

And I was surely enjoying myself. So much that instead of following the road back to Sharjah I turned left at Munaiy and headed more-or-less south towards Hatta. The southern part of that road is very interesting, plunging in and out of a wadi. As a result, it’s very twisty and there’s a rough concrete section every time the road and wadi paths cross. It’s imperative to keep control here (as indeed everywhere) because the road is particularly bouncy and uneven.

Arriving at Hatta, I realised that I’d run out of bendy roads, and I headed back towards Dubai. An obliging Chevrolet driver signalled the location of every speed camera between Hatta and Madam by hitting his brakes. It’s called bird-dogging by Beloved Wife: allowing someone else to set off all the speed traps.

It was dark by the time I got to Big Red, which was festooned with the headlights of hundreds of bikes, quads and 4x4s. By this time, my bike had done over 300km and the “Feed Me!” light was on. The petrol station halfway between Big Red and Lahbab was of course full of quads, all swarming around the petrol pumps like wasps around a jam pot. We all obediently gassed up in turn and paid the attendant. Compared with everyone else, my bike was completely silent. I really must do something about that…

I had already decided to go to the cinema before returning home, so I turned left at Lahbab roundabout and followed the new, wide and deserted highway to Jebel Ali. Thence on to the Emirates Road to Ibn Battuta mall and the multiplex cinema. To be honest, I was mildly surprised at how tired and stiff I wasn’t after more than 400km of spirited riding.

After the film, ‘District 9’* since you ask, I headed back to the Crumbling Villa along Al Khail Road. For the first time all day someone actually attempted to run me off the road with his SUV before heading off towards Business Bay bridge. I tailed him as he put his foot down. I was bird-dogging from several hundred metres back when the SUV was snapped at probably 180kph, significantly faster than me, and he stamped on his brakes. As I closed the distance, astonishingly he hit the loud pedal again. And got flashed at some ludicrous velocity. Again. An expensive evening out for someone.

Home again, home again, and after a good night’s kip it was time to clean the collection of dead bugs off the bike. As usual, they exacted their posthumous revenge by being almost impossible to shift.

* Incidentally, I understand that the Nigerian government has complained to the makers of ‘District 9’ about the way in which Nigerians are portrayed in the film. In an official communication, all references to Nigeria are to be removed before the film is allowed to be released in that country. I suspect that, like me, Mr Peter Jackson knows better than to pay attention to emails from Nigerian government officials.

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Jack in the greenwash

How much of an environmental footprint does a mobile phone leave? It’s huge, apparently. Apart from the packaging and the manual that weighs in at a pound or so, the handset is made of a miscellany of plastics, there’s a liquid-crystal screen, various bits of rare and precious metals, and a rechargeable battery.

Sony-Eriksson reckon that they can apply a 15% greenwash by using recycled plastics, reducing the packaging, and supplying the C901 phone manual electronically, in the handset itself. So if you can’t figure out how to install the battery or switch it on you’re gonna be royally shafted. I had a giggle at the idea of saving the Earth’s finite resources by using a 30 milliwatt charger instead of 100mW, and then, as is not mentioned, sitting around under the air conditioning for an additional hour at three kilowatts or more waiting for the battery to charge.

Lithium-ion batteries don’t last for ever. I’ve just discovered a fading battery which results in a super short standby time and my Nokia reporting a full battery when it obviously isn’t. So it’s time to replace the battery or buy a new phone. Surely extending the effective life of an otherwise serviceable handset by a couple of years is environmentally preferable to lashing out for a whole new one? By not changing the entire phone I also neatly avoid yet another new mains charger and replacing the car charger.

How much for an appropriate Nokia battery? In “Not Coming In” Dubai it’d be an astonishing and ridiculous Dh145. £25. Twenty-five quid. As the shop assistant pointed out, for only a little more cash I might as well buy a complete new handset. And charger. And manual. And carrying case. It’s the electronic version of flogging the car ‘cos the ashtrays are full, the only obvious beneficiary being the phonemonger.

In any case, the point is moot because nobody I asked had a BL-5B. They do exist on the interwebs though. They’re offered at between £5 and £15, plus whatever shipping charges are deemed appropriate. The problem here is that the on-line suppliers I contacted couldn’t ship beyond the impenetrable English Channel (Fog in Channel: Universe cut off) and were similarly incapable of accepting a credit card payment when the registered address isn’t in the United Kingdom. Only non-expatriate Brits ever use credit cards, obviously. www.4mobiles.co.uk promised to contact me with details for taking my order by email but they didn’t. So I’ll not be buying an iPhone or BlackBerry or N98 from them, will I?

I have now found a solution to the original battery problem at £6.95 that involves Nanny Goat, Eid Al Adha and Boeing. She’s coming anyway, so the carbon footprint incurred by schlepping a phone battery doesn’t count.

In related greenwash news, I have just learned that it is impossible for my UK-based credit card company to switch to paperless statements. The company needs a UK-based mobile phone number to SMS so that I’m reminded to check the balance and cough up the moolah. International numbers ‘aren’t acceptable’, and alerting me by email is ‘impossible’. So I shall have to continue receiving the dead tree version every month, air-freighted to my PO Box at enormous environmental expense.

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Are you not entertained?

There is a lot more to the institution that is the Gulf News Fun Drive than simply showing up on the day and having a jolly time in the desert. Just some of the various odds and ends that need organising come to mind:- Welcome packs, Goody bags, Permissions from the police and local authorities, Sponsors, Start venue, Finish venue, Catering, Breakdown recovery, Marshalling, and of course a Route.

Route selection starts several months prior to the event, and to this end, the Goat and his Goatmobile joined a small band of intrepid marshals last Friday to drive part of a prospective GNFD route. Clearly it has to be entertaining to drive, yet not too difficult for Fun Drivers who might not have a lot of – or indeed any – previous offroad experience. Picking a route by squinting at Google Earth tends not to reveal new fences, locked gates and in extreme cases, mile upon mile of new motorway. It would be a bit pointless if an off-road drive involved long sections on asphalt. Having dropped the tyre pressures to 15psi or even lower for sand use, protracted asphalt bashing beats hell out of the rubber.

Anyway, the seven of us in five cars representing Japan, Britain and the United States spent eight hours last Friday sweeping across great sandy swathes of the UAE. The Goat is of course sworn to absolute secrecy as to the route, notwithstanding that it is surely going to change repeatedly up to a final drive-through to erect the temporary signs. We found some interesting rocky bits and a lot of seif dunes that might become decidedly unseif after the ridges have been driven along by several hundred Fun Drivers. And we also discovered a magnificently dusty bowl that got a Nissan Patrol cross-axled and mired to above the axles. It took two winches to extricate the vehicle. Of course, photos had to be taken before anyone could render assistance: that’s in the rules.

There is a limit to how much entertainment is permitted in one day. It would probably be better, on reflection, if that particular area of quicksand is avoided. Fear not: there are many others yet to be discovered.

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Herbology expert

Beloved Wife and I spent Eid in Cyprus. We had commissioned a government-approved surveyor to mark out our plot boundaries in accordance with the official Land Registry records. Having met the surveyor on site, noted the lengths of rebar that he had banged into the ground at the corners, and paid the money, we are now in possession of an accurate survey. We have precise co-ordinates of the corners, a contour plan and the whole thing in AutoCAD as well as on paper. This ought to be enough to get an architect started on the planning permission for the Dream Home. But that won’t start in earnest until Beloved Wife and I agree the basic size, shape and orientation of the building.

Unlike defining a plot in town, where measuring off existing buildings and walls easily defines a plot, up in the boonies the surveyor had to measure half of Cyprus in order to ensure that our particular corner or a foreign field was precisely defined. And that, we were told, is why he wanted such a thick wad of banknotes. I was of course shrewd enough to get in writing beforehand that the price quoted was fully inclusive of all taxes, disbursements and those niggling extras that have an unfortunate habit of bunking up the bottom line so that it resembles the GNP of a small country.

The good news is that the plot is unexpectedly larger than we originally anticipated. The original advert said it was around 3300 sq.m; I’d measured the area using existing hedges as seen on Google Earth and discovered a disappointing 2740 sq.m. The survey reveals the actual plot fully includes one of the hedges and extends further south than expected, yielding 3578 sq.m, or 0.884 acres in old money.

I took hundreds of photographs of the land, the views, the existing herbaceous borders and the survey markers.

And this, dear reader, is where you come in: identifying the plants. Essentially, we’d like to retain as much of the mature planting as possible, but if it’s diseased or toxic to goats, it’ll have to go. Hopefully the greenery that remains will be pretty to look at, provide useful windbreaks, and might even produce edible fruit or something that gives a glossy coat.


No.1 and No.2
The first one is easy. It’s probably a carob tree Ceratonia siliqua and might even bear usable fruit. I could get hold of some wild honey and do a John the Baptist impersonation. The second plant appears to be some sort of parasite hanging off the carob. Its fruit is small black berries. No hints in any of our Mediterranean Plants and Gardens books or, so far, from the Interwebs.



No.3
That this is an oak of some sort is obvious from the acorns. But which one? There are holly oaks Quercus ilex around, but this one dares to be different. The leaves aren’t wobbly-edged as per the ‘traditional’ oak leaf, so which species is it?


No.4
The fruit smells of apple, so I suspect a crab-apple of some sort. But is that indeed the case, and is the fruit edible?


No.5
It seems that this one finished flowering a little while back and has perhaps gone to seed. Is it some kind of wild rose? There aren’t a load of thorns on the stems.


No.6
I think this may be Cistus ladanifer. But I'd appreciate the opinion of someone who knows more about plants than I. Most of the population, then.


No.7
I suspect this one is pistachio Pistacia lentiscus. The small berries are red and green. I guess they’re turning from red to black as they mature. Are these what eventually produce pistachio nuts?


No.8
Absolutely no clue at all with this plant.


No.9
Nor this one.


I found this page of the University of Reading's website of some use. Again, those who know and understand plants might get better use out of the page.

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