Two separate and seemingly unrelated incidents:
Incident One
Michele, the kids and I returned on Saturday from a very enjoyable 4 day mini-break in Muscat (the capital of Oman). Here are some photos. The nearly 6-hour drive (which was longer than planned due to Emma's unprecedented number of pot(ty)-stops) was managed with the assistance of a portable DVD player, Mary Poppins and, for a bit of musical variety, the soundtrack to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
On arrival at our hotel we found out that Tom Jones was performing that night in the hotel grounds, to 4,000 local... er... Muscatians. Obviously without tickets we were unable to attend, but come 8.30pm with the kids asleep, Michele and I crept out of our hotel room and peered out the window at the end of our corridor to take a peek at the show. It hadn't yet started, so we turned to walk back to our room only to bump into the showman himself on his way from the bar to the stage. Looking every bit of his near 70 years I should add.
As is always the case when you bump into famous people unexpectedly, he played it cool and pretended not to notice us. It's not unusual.
Anyway, I was able to catch some of the concert later by being able to see over the cordoned-off concert area from the hotel pool deck. I was pleasantly surprised. Even under the hot lights of the stage, and in temperatures that were already pushing 40 degrees, he pulled off a 90 minute show with great volume and flair. All the better to me for not having had to pay to see it!
Incident Two
Yesterday evening, around 10.15pm, the distinct smell of burning electrics was emanating from the cupboard under our stairs at home. More specifically, from a metal junction box mounted on the wall, one component of which I found to be rapidly overheating. I rang the local maintenance company who are contracted by Emaar (the master developer of our estate) to undertake all maintenance for Emaar properties. They arrived (a collection of bemused Indian men), claimed to have no knowledge or explanation for the problem, and promptly left suggesting I call Emaar.
10.30pm. I called Emaar. They were uninterested since the property was "out of warranty". I enquired as to whether they might be more interested if the property were on fire - but (not picking up on the veiled sarcasm) they could merely offer me the number of the local fire brigade, in the event that it might come in useful. They then suggested I call an alternate maintenance company.
Which I did. As was quickly becoming predictable, they could not attend due in this case to me not being one of their subscription customers - "'tis not allowed sir." Far be it from me to suggest that sometimes, rules are made to be broken...
10.45pm. I call Emaar again. A different call centre person. So I must explain the entire story again. They suggest I call the telecoms company (du), since it would seem that the junction box relates in some way to the cables providing telephone, cable TV and broadband to the entire house. I call du. They cannot help since, as far as they can see, all of my phone, TV and internet services are operating. I suggest that they may be operating, but that they are not facilitating for me much in the way of useful conversation. The problem though, I venture to suggest, is that these services may not be operating if the house burns to the ground. They seem to indicate that if, at that time, we would be interested in discussing a reconnection of the services, then they would be better able to assist.
11.00pm. I shut down all power to the house. Yet still the junction box has power. Manage to isolate the problem to an overheating reserve power battery. With all power off, and the battery therefore cooling down from something now approaching the temperature of the sun to more acceptable levels, we go to bed. I dream of Hell, and other hot places. Before realising that I am not in fact asleep and really am here in Dubai.
This morning, we begin the process of repeating the previous evening's telethon to determine whether any of the aforementioned companies may have slept on it, and woken up with some common sense. I then immediately realise again of course that we are, as I say, in Dubai, so I may be expecting too much....
Anyway. Notwithstanding Tom Jones' excellent performance a few nights ago, I cannot help but think that the karma of me being a sneaky, non-paying observer of his concert has come back to bite me. If only I'd realised that I was tempting fate as he was singing this.
