Maintenance

You can imagine how unimpressed I was when just as I was mid-omelette I received a call from the cleaning company to say that the cleaners had now arrived at our villa. In these parts of the world, they are either 4 hours early, 4 hours late or don't come at all, so it truly was to be expected. So after a bit of a fiery exchange (mainly because I was peeved I had to cut my breakfast short), the giant and I got in our hire car and headed to our place. There was a huge truck parked across our driveway and a 7 piece band, with cleaning instruments in hand, ready to play 'Operation Clean-up' in b minor. I've heard of an intensive clean with 2 maids at once, but 7? That's 35 man hours. Oh well, at least it will be a thorough clean and as the previous tenants were cat owners and to avoid the attack of the cat eye that a few of you have seen before, all feline hairs must be exterminated.

One of my skills that has really come in handy living in this part of the world are my ESL skills. I watch the giant trying to communicate with his huge vocabulary and long words and enjoy coming in to save the day with my preciseness and outstanding communicative language skills. For example, why say "the objective is to make them identical" when "make same" and a hand gesture will suffice? Mr Giant is learning, very patiently, but learning and asks for an assessment of his ESL skills after each encounter. We were talking just yesterday about how easy it is to get angry and frustrated at people because they don't understand you, especially when you are now talking to the 10th person who still doesn't know what you're talking about, but if I could speak as much Arabic as they could English, I'd be pretty impressed with myself. Reminds one to be patient...

So we’ve been waiting for maintenance to come to our villa all day. They were supposed to come yesterday at 2pm, and when I called at 2:15pm, the man in his limited English said “10 minutes... 4 o’clock”. Well what will it be partner? So I repeated and tried to get confirmation whether it was going to be “10 minutes” or “4 o’clock” to which he responded “ok -15 minutes”. What more can I say, ok that will do. True to his word, in 15 minutes he called and said “good afternoon” and wouldn’t continue until I also said “good afternoon” and then said “I am outside”. Outside of where I soon learnt, neither he nor I knew. The funny thing is that his boss owns this place, and as I understood it he was the maintenece guy for it, and yet even he had no idea how to get here. To cut a long story short, he went to a few more complexes somewhere else in Abu Dhabi and kept ringing and saying "hello I outside". In the end he didn’t end up getting anywhere closer to where we were until 4pm. I kept chasing him on the phone and when you call his number, instead of a “ring ring” he has an Arabic love song which I now know off by heart. Eventually we had to drive to a close by landmark where we both met and led the way for him back to our place. When we met him, I thought he’d be in a utility truck with all his tools of trade, but instead he was in a family SUV... with his entire family. He later told me he was in a hurry because they were on the way to a picnic. I thought he was bringing a ladder and putty filler to fix things, instead, he came with a picnic rug and quickly came in to check it all out. He said he woul send maintenance tomorrow- I still don’t quite know how this little man fits in to the equation although he is very sweet. So today he said maintenance would be there at 9am. We were there at 8:30am for the cleaners (as I have explained above) so I gave him a little extra time and rang at about 10 and he said “ok I come in 10 minutes”. He turned up and looked around at the men and he looked at me and said “no maintenance?” to which I responded “no maintenance”. Seeming a little peeved, he left and I didn’t hear from him until I rang later in the afternoon. We exchanged “good afternoon”s, and he said that maintenance would be there at 7pm. It’s now 8:30pm, I’m in bed at the Shangri La and still no sign. Rang and sang along to the love song a few times, but alas no response. Oh well tomorrow is another day.

I now remember all this from moving into Dubai only a year ago. Its all coming back to me now.