We received a circular at work today regarding weather warning for UAE residents. It seems that Saturday’s rain that left hundreds of people stranded on the road and a lot of flooding wasn’t all – to think the rainfall that single night must be equivalent to the whole year of rain in Dubai.

From the email:

From this evening onwards the weather will become unsettled with thunderstorms accompanied by heavy rain, strong gusty winds and the possibility of hail,” the met office said in its warning. “Winds may gust to 40 knots (75km/h) with poor visibility and flooding, making driving conditions difficult. This unsettled weather will persist throughout Tuesday.

Uhm, hello? Isn’t this desert land and not the tropical rainforests of Amazon and Southeast Asia! The people and moreover, the city isn’t capable of handling too much rain. No drainage on most parts, yes?

The circular continues:

All staff should be prepared for delays and make the necessary adjustments to ensure they get to work safely. Personnel who have planned long road journeys should reconsider their travel plans. It is better to delay visits and meetings than to spend hours in heavy traffic, while at the same time running the risk of being involved in an accident. Everyone should drive within their capabilities and anticipate and make allowances for poor driving habits on the part of others.

Aye. There were lots of those kind of driving habit on my way home yesterday. We live in the boundary of Dubai and Sharjah and the number of cars going to Sharjah were utilizing all the roads!

Photo credit: Arshad Ali/Gulf News

Sharjah was underwater, with most roads going to Sharjah impassable (even a day after the rains), traffic on Dubai roads connecting to Sharjah were a standstill. It took me 1.5 hours to go home yesterday instead of 20 minutes.

Just in!! As tweeted (by myself and other Dubai residents) about the rain that evolved from lovely to catastrophic…

Take a look at how the street outside my work building looks like after whole day of drizzle in Dubai!

Everyone should bring their swimsuits when it rains here.

Just below where the yellow crane is, is the underground Dubai Metro system under construction. I wonder what’s happening down there with that flood above it! Moreover, I wonder how I’m going to cross that road to get into my car parked across!!

I had to drive today after like, more than a month of shying away from the steering wheel after the minor accident I had. I’ve asked Pristine not to distract me, I’ve turned the radio off, said my prayers and opened my eyes wider. I sharpened my senses. Nothing will go wrong today. It’s just a 10 minute drive to Pristine’s school. How hard can it get?

Minutes and some very fast heartbeats later, I was able to survive the 6 lane traffic. Changed lanes safely, turned at the right signal and arrived in her school. I bade her goodbye, kissed and hugged her extra tight. I got back on the car, entered the big road again and stopped at the first red light, just a few meters from the school. I am the first car, I looked at my back mirror. Cars are piling up behind me.

I’ve passed the road I was so afraid of.

A police man came from my right, carrying a small notebook. He looked long and hard at me and made a cut-throat gesture . And took note of my car plate number.

What?! WHAT DID I DO?

I looked around. Everything was in place, peaceful. There is no car in front of me that I could’ve bumped or something. I looked at the fellow driver on my left and when he saw me with hundreds of question marks all over my face, he was amused. Annoyingly amused and pointed to something.

Nothing was wrong, everything was in place, except one. My seatbelt.

I almost choked writing that one. Can you believe it? Whatever happened to me? Seven years of driving and I have never, EVER been without a seatbelt. Please don’t tell me this is first stage of dementia.

Thanks to the dreadful Conficker Virus that is said to activate on April Fool’s day, my company’s IT department has decided not to risk anything and just shut all internet connection and email for one full day tomorrow. Imagine that 9 whole hours inside the office with no emails, no internet. How will we work?

And most importantly, what will we (ahem, I) do, in between? No twitter, no blog, no gmail. It will be a very long day!The virus could be the biggest April Fool’s joke ever played on the internet, or it could be one of the worst days ever for computers connected to the network.

What do you think?

Today I learned that it is not good to wait for something to happen to blog about. I should’ve just made a pre-written post to come live on Monday morning but I didn’t and waited for something interesting to see or happen so I can blog about it.

And you know what? I got what I wished for.

On those days when I’m walking blank and think about what to write, something happens, it can be less exciting like rain or another road diversion or me getting late but also sometimes, surprising or unpleasant ones come up.

I had a road accident today.

No, nothing major as it was in the middle of a very bad traffic, the cars were crawling and I was driving at like, 5 kmh, much like not stepping on the accelerator and just letting the car run on its own. I tried to change to the left lane but the driver was so aggressive and wouldn’t give way. I couldn’t turn to Pristine’s school (yes, she was in the car with me – thankfully with a seat belt on) if I don’t change lanes and one thing I learned about driving in Dubai is that I have to make my mind and be in the right lane as early as possible.

I kept looking at my left side as the big, burly Pajero wouldn’t give way, so was the Armada behind him. Too engrossed with not bumping the ones on my left, I missed to see the car who suddenly put on brakes in front of me. I stopped my car, desperately but it touched.

The two cars smooched. A peck.

The driver came out and looked at the back of his car to see a small scratch – it was not even a dent. I had a scratch too and we proceeded to drive on the side of the road and called the police.

* We are fine. Pristine nagged and told me to be careful. I was but I guess not quite!  After the police left and we have to proceed to her school, I was silent then she told me, “Don’t worry mom, when I grow up, I’ll drive and I am careful. You don’t have to drive anymore.*

Apparently, finding a phone in a garbage bin felt like finding an item that has been on your wish list for years. Never mind the cigarette butts and the ashes, the rotting banana peeling and perhaps spit, a phone in a garbage bin is a treasure.

I solved the mystery of my missing phone this morning after having a very tough sleepless night.

At first, I thought I must have dropped it in the hotel lobby, just outside the gym where I was holding my phone last. I went back to the hotel this morning and checked the surveillance camera. Just before getting on the elevator at 2 pm, heading back to my office, I was holding my phone, with a piece of A3 paper (scratch paper) in my hand. When I came out of the lift, I saw myself again, still holding my phone so no, I did not drop it inside the hotel. And if I did, the staff would have reported it to their Lost and Found section.

I got out, turned right, walking towards my office but stopped by a garbage bin to throw the A3 scratch paper and mindlessly, along with it, horror of all horrors, my phone.

That’s it, there’s no other explanation.

I couldn’t have dropped it on the pavement while I was walking towards the next building where my office was. It was on the garbage bin.

I called my own number this morning and got really excited because my phone rang!! Yesterday, it was saying that it was switched off. Someone answered my call but then hung up on me. I called again, that someone on the other end hung up again. I sent an sms begging to please return my phone, that it has a tracking device (lousy trick?), threaten that I know where it was and will call the police.

No use. Finders keepers/thieves don’t operate that way.

So there, I am officially phoneless. I’ll go to the telecom company tonight to get another SIM card with the same number. Losing a phone is so stressful, more so because I know that it was entirely my fault. I hate myself for being so careless!

Saturdays are always uneventful for me. It’s my first work day of the week, Fridays being my day off. The roads are unclogged and I drive to work in a breeze in like, less than 15 minutes. Workload is not too much compared to the “normal” weekdays in the “normal” world.

I thought, what would I blog about today? Not having any idea as the hours passed, I answered emails, checked a few blogs hosting parties, commenting and of course, did my office work. I went to the gym at lunch break and back to the office at 2 pm.

And then realized I LOST my beloved cellphone. It’s nothing fancy or ultra expensive but it’s the one I got as a present to myself on my first bonus last year. The one that holds a lot of pictures and music, the one that I might probably never be able to buy again, given my current financial status!!

I thought I just misplaced it so I called my own number. “The number you have dialled is currently switched off.” WTH?

I need my phone baaaack!! Ok, even just the SIM and the memory card! I want it baaack. It’s a nightmare because I could have sworn I put it inside my gym bag but it’s nowhere there right now. I have applied for several jobs using my mobile number and now I am unreachable.

*pulling my hair out*

I took a break today from work to attend an event at my daughter’s school. When I arrived, there were no more parking spaces and I had to drive all the way to the next block to park my car. As I walked along the way, I noticed that there cars parked in front of residential gates. I thought, maybe the cars just parked there temporarily or must be belonging to the owners of the house. (Pristine’s school is located in the middle of a residential area.)

In the middle of the program, the school principal made and announcement that a car blocking a residential gate has to be moved because the house owners needs to take their child to the hospital! She asked any of the parents to please if they have parked their car on the driveway of the school’s neighbors, they should immediately go and remove it. A car licence plate number was announced over and over and over – but still no one bothered to stand up. One woman interrupted, “can you tell us the color and the brand of the car?”

The principal replied, “Why, you don’t know the licence plate number of your car?” I looked around…so many people (especially moms) had blank expressions and shook their heads. I can’t believe one can be driving without knowing their car license plate number!

Dubai Police had to be summoned to remove the car. When the school announced the color and the brand, one lady stood up and realized it was her car. Sheeesh.

Do you know your car license plate number?

Life is a little bit crazy here in the Emirates for two consecutive days now. The dreadful choke o’ block traffic is back. It was ok for the past few weeks but since yesterday, I had been spending more than an hour driving and surviving through heavy traffic. Normally, it just takes 15 minutes to drive from my home to my office but yesterday and today took me at least 60 minutes. I could have done a complete yoga session inside my static car.

No one can really pinpoint the real cause of the severe traffic jam – could be random accidents here and there (accidents could be the cause but then it could be an EFFECT too), construction of the Dubai Metro that has resulted in closed lanes and confusing diversions, increase in cars, increase in people living and commuting from the neighboring Emirate of Sharjah, etc.

* Dubai expats run to Sharjah for a cheaper option in apartment rents. Sadly, Sharjah’s public transport system is almost non-existent so the Emirate is flooded with cars. Most of these cars travel to Dubai everyday, adding congestion. *

I arrived at 8:45, 15 minutes late. My boss who travels from Sharjah came to office at 10:30 yesterday and 9:00 today. So my being late is a little bit okay (I suppose?). Still doesn’t fix the annoying feeling I have with regards to traffic.  *sigh*

Traffic jams happen frequently here I am amazed traffic story still lands a space in the news.  Read the comments below the news article, too.

Last Friday night, we were having trouble accessing websites with secure https in the address like bank sites. Web pages using secure ports takes hours to load or not opening at all.

We just bought a new router to replace the old one we were using as Etisalat (the internet provider here in the UAE) said the old router was the problem we were getting cut off with our internet connection for so many days at home.

Having to buy a new router, of all things, especially these days that Christmas is coming is a pain in itself but again we are having faulty, on and off connection? Unacceptable!

But the Siemens router was indeed doing its nice job and the twitching internet connection was not its fault. News came out that submarine cable systems in the Mediterranean, specifically located between Alexandria and Italy were cut.

The damage to three cables resulted in high levels of network congestion and degradation of international voice service and data traffic, affecting all customers in the UAE, Levant, Egypt and parts of Africa.

The disruption also affected Asian countries as far away as Singapore, Malaysia, India and Pakistan.

Why do these kind of things happen all the time? Is this normal? I have lived in Japan for 10 years and I have not heard of sea cables being cut and internet service being disrupted. It’s the second time this happened in my two years stay in Dubai.

The news went on.

Meanwhile, a French ship on Saturday took experts to repair the broken cables, France Telecom said.

Internet service in the UAE is still disrupted in most offices (it’s working in mine, thankfully). I can only imagine the negative effect it will have on people and businesses that do electronic trading.

The full cable damage news is found here.