'Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?', 'Whadda you got?' - Marlon Brando, The Wild One, 1953

One of the things I realised while growing up in England was that every generation needs to rebel against something, normally the status quo, as represented by their parents and elders.  Although that may be a relatively recent phenomenon, starting perhaps after the second world war?  Certainly the iconic images of rebellious youngsters seem to be from that era,  Marlon Brando and James Dean from the silver screen and musicians such as Bill Hayley, Elvis and Cliff Richard (yes, he was considered dangerous at the time..) from the music scene. I put it down to the youth of the day wanting to make their own mark, maybe prove that they are individuals and not just replicas of their parents.  I'm not a social historian so can only apologise if this trait was going on before the 1950s.  It's just that I associate teenage rebellion with Marlon Brando and not someone from the Victorian or any other earlier age, although maybe there was a cohort of youngsters going out without top hats on to 'stick it to the man.'?

Marlon Brando, this was in his later bus driving days judging by the hat..



The obvious manifestation of independence for teenagers is in their clothing.  In my day they would wear anything but the same clothes as their parents, often influenced by the fashion in popular musicians at the time.  For my generation it was the like of David Bowie and Marc Bolan, followed by punk I guess.  I still remember when an older lad came to school with a Bowie-esque lightening strike across his face and another drawn in chalk across the back of his blazer.  You knew he was going to get in a lot of bother for these statements but you also had to acknowledge his chutzpah in expressing his rebelliousness.

No such demonstrations here.  We had a 'dress down' day last week in support of the #bringbackourgirls campaign, a worthy cause if there ever was one.  As always with these special days, some students throw themselves in to the theme, which is to wear red in this case, while others prefer not to participate, as is their right.  But there is a also a large contingent who take the opportunity to wear the clothes of their choice, neither school uniform nor the advised dress down alternative.  For boys it is the traditional white kandora (also available in other colours, notably cream and grey) and maybe a keffiya on their head to finish off the traditional attire.  For girls it's the abaya black robe and shayla on their head, again very traditional.  

As you're gathering, they like to dress the same as their parents, so to the untrained eye it looks like a crowd of diminutive adults coming in to school rather than teenagers.  Being a positive sort of bloke I put this down to them respecting their elders and wanting to carry on the traditions of the past, but can you imagine the same thing happening in the UK on Comic Relief day, 'dress down for £1'?  You'd have the boys rocking up sporting jeans from M&S and a nice comfortable cardigan, the girls in some leggings from Peacocks and an ill fitting fleece with a border collie motif.  Please note these images are from the last time I was in the UK and had time to observe fellow Brits, maybe the parental fashion has changed in the last year?

The closest I came to having an image of any sort was when my friends and I rode motorbikes.  We were all leather jackets and black leather boots on machines with exhaust systems that would make windows fall out at a hundred yards, no consideration for anyone else, just the desire to make your bike sound quicker than it was.  During the late 70's early 80's there was a mod revival, no doubt encouraged by The Jam and other two tone bands.  They were mods and where you have mods you have to have rockers, it's a yin & yang thing.  By default we were rockers, only because we rode motorbikes and not scooters and wore leather rather than parkas.  I couldn't have picked Gene Vincent out of a police line up if my leather jacket had depended on it.

For future reference, this is Gene Vincent.
In those days we went to the cinema a lot, there was no multi channel TV or internet, so you went out with your mates instead, everyone under the age of thirty is now confused, 'what do you mean, no internet.?!'.  I think I'm right in saying the three screen cinema in Worthing, The Odeon,  was knocked down to make way for Laura Ashley, not the Laura Ashley you understand but one of her shops.  We were left with the Dome Picturedrome, a fabulous building dating back to the dawn of moving pictures.  So one weekend my mate and I went to see the film of the week, apparently all about mods and rockers, Quadrophenia.  We arrived late so the Pearl and Dean adverts had already started, the place was dark, we took our seats and removed our leather jackets.

It transpires the film was all about the mods, the only time rockers made an appearance was in a mass fight on Brighton beach.  After it finished the lights went up and we prepared to leave.  However it now appeared that we were the only 'rockers' in the place, everyone else was wearing Fred Perry attire and a parka, oh dear..  We sensibly stayed seated until everyone else had left then put on our leather jackets and left, as inconspicuously as we could.

Mods, looking well moody as they say in London.

Whilst writing this my attention has been drawn to the mini-heatwave that the UK is about to experience, with, and I quote 'a sweltering 24C'.  I have no wish to be a pedant, and I do not want to upset my journalist niece, but I do think the press are once again using hyperbole to exaggerate a modest rise in temperature.  In the Cambridge Dictionary swelter is: 'to feel very hot'.  Now I'm not sure 24C is that hot?!  I guess the headline 'Britain to get a bit warmer for a short time' is simply not eye catching enough, but out here nothing under 50C gets a mention and even then it would need to be a slow news day.  So good luck everyone with your mini heatwave, don't forget your suncream, and it's probably OK to take off the cardigans and border collie motif fleeces, at least around mid-day.

Hit the road Jack.

Once again I doff my cap to Tim Berners-Lee, thanks to whom we can read the abridged internet version of what was our local paper in the UK, the Littlehampton Gazette.  Amongst the usual headlines of 'multiple electric shopper cart pile up in high street' and 'cat found in take away freezer', it was refreshing to see that local politicians are once again lobbying the government to find a solution to the A27 between Worthing and Arundel.  Whilst I admit that at first glance this will be of no interest to anyone who doesn't live or pass through West Sussex, bear with me, I have more international offerings later and I do believe that the traffic problems there are the same as those everywhere else, it's the solutions that change.

So look at the map.  Worthing hugs the South-East coast of England twixt Brighton and Portsmouth, but not quite making it on to this cartography.  Motorways in that region tend to service the needs of London and everywhere else has to put up with it.  So you arrive at Dover and want to get to Brighton.  Head along the coast hugging A259 obviously, past Hastings, Eastbourne and on to Brighton.  That's a good plan, just so long as you have a couple of days to do the 80 miles or so, due to the mix of single and dual carriageway.  Plan B is to take the motorways, the first heading towards London, the second heading away from it towards Brighton, a longer but ultimately quicker route.  Having arrived through one circuitous route, you now want to continue West to Portsmouth, bonne chance.

Again no motorway connects Brighton and all points West.  So you have a mixture of dual and single carriageway, which works like a series of bottlenecks, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down.  Then in rush hours, Saturdays, bank holidays, summer time periods, speed up, stop, repeat until exasperated.  When we first moved to Worthing in '72, that's 1972 not 1872 they were talking about building bypasses to make the whole route dual carriageway, and they are still talking, and talking, and talking...

As always there are two options, the route through the town and the route through the countryside.  The former means compulsory purchase of properties and re-routing of urban throughways, the countryside route involves digging up the green and pleasant land, including voles, butterflies, rabid and tuberculosis ridden Badgers etc.  Naturally there are people who object to one or the other, or both.  A mantra and truism of the anti countryside route campaign is that once a by-pass is built, the green bit in-between the new road and the town is then infilled by houses and supermarkets.  This does give the impression that planners do a squiggle then colour in the gaps in Tesco blue or Asda green, which is what children used to consider entertaining before the ipad came along.  See, I told you four years of doing a degree in planning was unnecessary.

The last plans for the A27 were ditched following a government review of road projects, but rest assured millions, in fact many millions of pounds had been spent over the forty years or so of thinking about it, probably enough to build a few miles of road.  But it seems that the scheme is being resurrected, and I am sure it will be thoroughly researched, then consigned to the file marked 'bin'.  In the meantime the traffic queues, fuel is burned, tempers fray and the environment suffers.  But even now I hear locals saying 'but if you sort out Worthing and Arundel, what happens when you get to Chichester', you get stuck again is the answer..

No such problem in the Middle East, where the space vs people ratio favours a speedy decision.  Take a ruler (the drawing type, not a monarch), draw a line, build the road.  Need three lanes?  Not a problem, build seven so we have some spare capacity.  Which is why when you drive to Abu Dhabi from Dubai on the 611 you are often the only car on the road, for mile, after mile, after mile, and that's during the day.  Sure there is congestion down town but forty years ago, when the A27 was being considered for expansion, Dubai was a small town, 'Baby take a look at me now'..  Is our problem at home caused by politicians who make every decision with an eye on the ballot box?  If so there is not much danger in one being made before the next election, methinks?

I have a new addition to my list of 'Things I wished I'd been told beforehand as it would have avoided me getting stressed', I must think of a punchier title..  We needed to send a passport to the UK for renewal however the old one had a residence visa in it.  Now, losing official paperwork like that is a real headache so suffice to say I was on tenterhooks for the whole time it was in transit lest it got lost.  We also put in a special request saying we needed the old one back as it contained the visa, surely a common situation?

Six nail biting weeks later, the new one arrives, all on it's lonesome, where is the old one with the visa?!  Naturally we both looked at each other and sighed, envisioning numerous phone calls.  You see calling a local rate number from the UK is not a big deal, doing it from a mobile out here is slightly more expensive, especially when you're on hold for long periods.  Then we were told by numerous people 'oh don't worry, they always send them back separately, it'll turn up', and it did, woo hoo!  But why don't the Passport Office tell you that on their website?  I searched it again today and there is no reference to the practice at all?  So you heard it here first, 'don't panic Captain Manwaring'..

Footnote:  although when the roads are empty, it does encourage 'creative' driving...

Moi, je ne regrette rien..

We are now in our third and final term of the academic year so there is a lot of planning going on for the next one, and reflection of what we newbies have been through in the 8 months since we arrived.  When we first announced our intentions of working abroad, my brother said I should write a blog for two reasons:  so we could reflect on what we had been through - you forget so much, and to help other people going through the same experience.  I know the first aspect has been very valuable, other people need to decide on the second.

I recently went back to Dubai airport for the first time since last August and it was a strange feeling, deja vue in a way.  I have memories of coming through to the arrival 'meet and greet' area after our eleven hour journey, during which the whole experience seemed surreal.  We had rented our house out, got rid of the majority of our worldly goods, given up our jobs, sold our cars, burnt a lot of bridges, but on the flight you are in limbo.  If you turned back you had a huge headache of what to do next, but by carrying on you had a job offer and the opportunity of a real adventure.  We know of only one couple who went with the first option.  They arrived and within 24 hours they were on their way back.

If you're thinking of working abroad in the education sector, there are certain concepts that you have to get used to.  When you're buying a home or changing job in your own country you have time to research the market, check out locations, see what the schools are like, make an informed decision.  This can take months or years.  But when you decide to come overseas you often don't have the opportunity to do that level of investigation.  A lot of international job offers give you only 24 hours to decide on acceptance or refusal and if you're looking in a general area i.e. the Middle East, you probably haven't visited every country or city.  If you go to a recruitment fair it's the same, you could be interviewed by three schools in three different parts of the world, and if they offer you a position you have to let them know the following day.

So thank you Tim Berners-Lee, the modest and unassuming inventor of the internet!  You get an offer, spend about 12 hours through the night researching the place, then make a decision, that's it!  Before you know it you're on a flight thinking:  what's the flat going to be like? Am I going to get on with my colleagues?  Can I cope with the change of lifestyle?  If you have a child you're multiplying these questions by a factor of 10!  We had never visited the Middle East at all so the unknown was far greater than the known for us.  But thems the breaks, if you want to make the omelet, you have to break the eggs.

I started to think about a pro & pro list, things that I like about here and things that I miss about England/France. 

1.  If you shop here when you shopped at home the supermarkets and malls are virtually empty.  

This picture was taken at our local Spinneys (think Waitrose) at mid-day on a Friday, our equivalent of a European Saturday.  The shop was similarly empty as was Marks & Spencer, where we were the only customers in the entire shop.  Compare and contrast with 10pm on a Friday night when these places are absolutely heaving, comparable to the last weekend before Christmas at home, when you can't get in the car park!  I'm also pretty used to having someone put fuel in the car for me and pack my bags at the supermarket.

2.  We miss being able to easily buy things off the internet, especially Tesco direct! 

We were used to having our friendly Tesco delivery team rock up at the door with our groceries, having to go and get them each week is a chore!  That's the price you pay for not having an address!

3.  Come to the UAE, meet the world!

In my opinion, when you travel you meet amazing people from all over the world.  When you live and work amongst a wide variety of people it definitely broadens your horizons and gives you an insight in to how the other half live, without all the negativity you see on the news.  I also think this is a marvelous opportunity for our daughter to grow up with an understanding and appreciation of different cultures rather than with preconceptions and mistrust.

4.  Home thoughts from abroad.

Naturally there are times when you miss the family and friends that you've left behind, but Skype is a fantastic thing!  We've been fortunate to have several visitors since we've been here and our return tickets are booked for a trip in the summer break.

5.  If you don't like the scenery, change it..

One of the reasons we came here was for the adventure, to see new places and try different things.  The desert is a magical place, quiet and mystical with camels and scrub trees dotted on an otherwise featureless landscape.  The mountains are magnificent, rugged and stratified, telling the story of how they were formed.  But we do miss the greenery of home!  You end up watching Downton Abbey just to remind you what the countryside looks like!

6.  You are what you eat..

Let's face it supermarkets are pretty much the same the world over and most food is available anywhere.  However I do miss:  fish and chips, a good roast and a hand drawn pint of beer, not all at the same time though..

A big mosque, Ikea and a rant about queues.

We're enjoying two weeks off school as a spring break at the moment and we've taken the opportunity to go and see Abu Dhabi.  It is always easy to generalise about any country or region and when you talk about the UAE people generally associate the area with: A) being hot, B) oil and C) desert.  Like most stereotypes there is an element of truth, it is warm in the summer, there is desert and some of the Emirates have oil, mainly in Abu Dhabi with much smaller reserves in Dubai and Sharjah.

However, scratch just below the surface and you find that the seven Emirates that make it up are very different.  The fact they are unified is a great compliment to the diplomacy and vision of the Sheikhs that put it together and those that have worked in the last forty-two years to make it a success.  This diversity is what motivates us to spend some time travelling around and hence our trip to Abu Dhabi.

We took the opportunity to go and see the Sheikh Zayed Mosque (Tripadvisor:  #1 attraction in Abu Dhabi, that's 19 places above Ferrari world and not a roller coaster in sight..) and we were very impressed.  I have to admit we do like to visit large places of worship wherever we go, partly because they are normally very impressive pieces of architecture and also because I think it tells you a lot about the people who built them and what life was like at the time of construction.  Let me give you an example.  Avignon is a medium size, very attractive Medieval town in Provence.  But for a short while in the XIV century it was the centre of the Catholic world as Rome was in upheaval.  Thus in the middle of this quaint place you find an enormous and striking Papal Palace, fascinating, or as my children would have said 'you're kidding, we're not walking round this are we?', oh how we'd have laughed...  Suffice to say we also visited the pont, but I didn't dance.

One of the Palais, sure it's big but think of the heating bills...

Everest were always coming round trying to flog them a new door.

So having established we have previous for this sort of visit, we went to the Grand Mosque.  First impressions are that it is aptly named, it is grand and it's definitely a Mosque so no trouble with the Estate Agents' description.  Secondly, entry is free as is a guided tour or an audio guide and all are welcome.

Now I am a sucker for an audio guide, as my wife will tell you.  One sure way of getting me to shut up and wander off for an hour is to give me something that looks like an iPhone with a cheap headset then point me towards 'information point 1'.  Although the award for the most frustrating audio guide goes to the Bayeux Tapestry.  In an effort to keep you moving it doesn't give you an option to re-listen to any of the descriptions and accidentally I skipped one. With my OCD for this sort of thing (I am a 'completer/finisher', I have to watch a TV series from the start and in chronological order, can't dip in half way through)  I wanted to hear the bit I'd missed but the only way to do it was to go all the way round and start again.  Damn you Normans, you weren't even French..

Back to the Mosque, it is an awe inspiring place.  Pure white marble, tranquil pools of blue, cool shady walkways and a cavernous interior.  You have to be impressed with the attention to detail and the commitment to produce a unique building that will stand out amongst the thousands of others built for the same purpose throughout the world.

The hundreds of pillars are in the style of a date palm and inlaid by hand with semi precious stones and mother of pearl in a floral design.  The main chandelier weighs 10 tons and was constructed in Germany, everywhere you look the attention to detail, the quality of the products used and the craftsmanship is amazing.  Yet it doesn't feel ostentatious, the mission statement for the project was 'unite the world' and the various places that they sourced material from and the artisans they used echoed this vision.

Whereas most big cathedrals in Europe are old buildings, this place was built between 1996 - 2007 so is very much a modern statement.

Following our morning of culture, in the afternoon we visited another place of global wonderment and pilgrimage, Ikea.  Like other places of interest, we have visited Ikea stores in several countries and you will be relieved to hear that the one in Abu Dhabi is much the same as the ones in St. Etienne and  Southampton.  You don't see many reviews on TripAdvisor for them but to summarise:  entry is free, they are air conditioned/heated depending on the exterior environment, the canteen has a predictable and reasonably priced selection, and if you need to stock up on stubby HB pencils or paper tape measures these are free and readily available.  Just like the stores in Europe, only 4 of the 30 tills were open so you had to queue up to leave, I will ask my 'go to' Ikea insiders why that is always the case, but that's not a phenomenon that you only find in this shop.  Our Carrefour here suffers from the same problem, as do many immigration passport control areas in airports and sometimes worst of all,  Eurotunnel.  I never got that.

Gatwick last week, suffice to say, some people had been in the queue at passport control for some time..

 

I can appreciate how a shop can get caught out by a sudden influx of customers at a normally quiet time of day, maybe four coach loads of tourists stop off for a toilet break and decide to stock up on water, travel sweets in tins and 'buy one get one free' Coco Pops.  But at peak times airports and other travel hubs are often fully booked so the number of passengers passing through is entirely predictable, why not staff up accordingly? (This is now the rant section of the blog, our friend Elaine's favourite bit..) 

It's the same when you ring a call centre.  When was the last time you heard 'thank you for calling, we'll be dealing with your inquiry quickly and efficiently as we have accurately estimated the volume of calls that we'll be receiving today', never I bet?  But you have heard 'due to an unexpectedly high volume of calls you are in a queue,  there are 56 people ahead of you, as an alternative you can call back' quite often I reckon?  So they had time to make a special recording informing me of their inefficiency but not enough time to ring up some extra staff to come in and do some overtime?

If they were really honest what they should say is 'we know that all our competitors are rubbish at answering the phone too so what are you going to do?  I'll tell you what, nothing.  Oh and don't bother with Uswitch it's a complete con, we all know what the competition charges and it works out the same at the end of the year'.

I thought that IT was supposed to iron out all these kinks by giving the decision makers the management information they need to predict call levels?  Maybe it does, maybe they ignore it to save money?

At least over here we don't have that dilemma, there is normally only one choice for a service, maybe two at a push so there is no switching, but the companies involved don't make you wait any longer for an answer than the ones in a free market.

Doin' stuff..

Sorry for the delay since my last missive, but we've been doin' stuff.  Just as when you're going on holiday you go with a list of things you'd like to see and do, (or maybe that's just me, my family and close friends often joke at my expense, 'Les is coming to visit, that'll mean going to an art gallery then...)  when we moved out here we (maybe I) did some research and came up with a mental to do list.

Thus we recently went dune bashing, a name/description that always baffled me?  Why not dune cruising or just dune driving?  I'll tell you why..

Having found a local company and in the process saving a two hour round trip to Dubai, we were picked up on time by our driver for the day in his Toyota Land Cruiser.  Off we went at a sedate pace to the rendezvous in the desert and marveled/reveled in the splendor of the wilderness while the other clients arrived.  When the group was complete we set off, only to find that a car had got stranded on the peak of a dune, its wheels spinning helplessly.  Our driver was asked to help and whilst I don't speak his language, I could tell he was less than impressed with his colleague who had managed to get stuck in what he considered to be a car park.  See picture 1.

So we unceremoniously heaved them off the crest and set off in pursuit of the group.  Now you need to know that in the blurb you get for the tour they describe this as being 'adrenaline fueled', however I have done some off road stuff in the UK and whilst it had its full throttle moments, most of the time you were being told to 'go slowly and maintain traction', so that was my reference point for 4x4 adventures.  As I mentioned, we set off in pursuit, much as a greyhound chases a phoney rabbit.  We seemed to be crossing the sand at the speed of light, the driver put his headlights on and it lit up the road behind, you were right Albert..  The car was sideways, pointing down at 181 degrees, pointing up at 359 degrees, we didn't know if it was Christmas, Easter or our birthdays, but we did know it was fun!  We were a whooping and a hollering and the driver clearly believed in the fairground maxim of 'scream if you want to go faster'.  We did, and so did he..  See picture 2.

It's worth mentioning that our four year old is notoriously car sick, so we were a bit worried that the Land Cruiser could become the Vomit Comet.  However, far from being sick she was bouncing around in the third row shouting 'faster, faster!'.  After an afternoon of seemingly impossible descents and moments where you were convinced the thing was going to roll over, (sand coming over the side window gives you that impression) we arrived at the Bedouin camp where we spent the night being fed and entertained.  See picture 3.

How would I summarise our adventure?  It was excellent, truly exciting and in an amazing environment.  Even this close to civilization the desert is a place that is breathtaking and awe inspiring, I can only imagine what it's like in the middle of a huge expanse such as the Sahara.  The hospitality was superb and we all had a great time.  My advice would be that if you want to go dune bashing don't go alone, and use someone else's car, preferably with a roll cage, it makes you feel better.

Now the second bit of stuff what we done (use that for language analysis Camille :-)). It seems a shame not to live in the UAE and not go up the Burj Khalifa.  See picture 4.

According to Wikipedia (never wrong) it is the tallest man made structure in the world, and the observation deck on the 124th floor is the third highest in the world.  I personally think that it is beautiful and the fact that the architects and engineers combined an aesthetically pleasing design in a building of extreme functionality is a credit to human endeavor. Ascending in the lift you get virtually no sensation of movement, just the popping of your ears and the fast scrolling digitalised display of the floor you are passing to let you know that you're going up faster than the price of gas in a cold winter.

Once on the viewing floor you are at first amazed by the sheer height and then immediately made aware of the geography of this part of Dubai.  See picture... you get the idea.

Desert, waterway, random skyscraper.  Why build upwards so much when you could go sideways?  What do I know, I'm not a town planner.  You then see the nearby buildings along with the Big Ben replica.  I don't know the answer to your question, 'why'?

 Then in the mist the Burj Arab and Atlantis on the Palm.

I thoroughly enjoyed the perspective that it gives you and will be going again in a few weeks time.  After all if someone has gone to all that effort to build it, it would seem rude not to have another look.

'I don't like cricket, I love it'..

In true EAL teacher style, have a look at this photo and tell me what you see.

You may have thought that it's a group of people on scrub-land in an industrial area, and you're right.  But look more closely and you'll see that it's actually two games of cricket, one in the foreground and one in background, slightly obscured by the white cars.  If you look at the nearest wicket, the group on the right are the crowd or waiting batsmen and the dark coloured car is in short mid on.

In the game that's furthest away, the collection of white vehicles are parked in the slips and gulley and a good shot to deep mid-on would leave the ball amongst the lorries.  Just to the left of the trucks are some blokes using the back of a van as a makeshift stand.  The wickets themselves are on a road so when a taxi comes down it this happens:

and play has to stop while it passes.  Either that or a batsman has just hit the ball and jumped in the cab to grab a sneaky run.  Whether it then reversed up for the second I don't know.  In this picture you can also see food delivery van parked in forward square leg, don't all cricket pitches have that?!  I would like to thank Wikipedia for the names of various cricket fielding positions, which has saved my Dad and my friend Simon's embarrassment at my lack of knowledge in that area..

What I'm ambling towards here are my observations on sport out here.  Cricket is an obsession with men from the Indian sub-continent, although obsession is probably an understatement.  You don't realise how much they like it until you live, work and teach amongst them.  So every Friday morning pieces of what you thought were scrub land turn themselves in to cricket pitches.  Some of them have hardened wickets so the batting surface is relatively flat, whilst the out fields are always rubble strewn.  None of the pampered lush green cricket grounds that you get in the UK.  This next picture gives you an idea of the terrain we are talking about:

The fielders closest to us are on the boundary and there is a ring of slightly larger rocks that mark it. We've seen at least a dozen grounds like this in the town, which must make cricket the most popular sport for participation here, although the local lads do play a lot of football.  I am full of admiration for people that play and enjoy sport in less than ideal conditions.  It seems to fit in with the concept that you should enjoy it for what it is rather than what you wear or the kudos of where you do it.

I'm not sure where the UAE sits on this.  As a county it gives the appearance of being sport mad, there are numerous prestigious golf and tennis events out here, not to mention the Formula 1 grand prix races.  The headquarters of the ICC (International Cricket Council) are in Sharjah and again there are spectacular cricket matches played in the area.  On a local level in RAK, there are two golf courses, which are reasonably priced for those in the region but prohibitively expensive for ordinary folk.  Tennis is virtually non existent, as far as I know there are only six courts in the town perimeter and none of these are covered so playing in the summer is a no-no.

This weekend was the RAK half marathon and it was superbly organised and well supported by runners from all over region, so clearly running is a popular past-time but from what I could see, mainly with the expat community from around the world.  So I think it's fair to say that sport has a high profile and the grander spectacles have a lot of investment passed their way.  What remains to be seen is when or how much of this money finds it's way to grass roots level, where it can foster participation from local participants and produce professional sports people from the region.  From my experience with the LTA in the UK, this can take quite a while!

Whilst on a sports theme, I have watched about ten minutes of the winter Olympics.  What I saw was the relay skeleton bob, or it may have been the luge, I'm not sure of the difference?  'Relay' I hear you say, 'how does that work'?  Well I'm glad you asked.  First up a lady in Lycra laying flat on her back on tiny tray with blades on.  She thunders down the track and at the end slaps/punches a flap hanging over the run which activates a green light at the top and voilá, the next person on the team starts their descent.  This was a bloke on a tray and when he gets to the flap the last team members go, a two-up tray.  Yes tray, not a bullet shaped bob sleigh where they sit in tandem, just a tray with one guy laying on his back atop it and another laying on top of him, like a Lycra sandwich.  Suffice to say the homophobic element who insisted that the Olympics had to be 'gay free'  must have been have been livid.  Not that I'm suggesting anything about the sexuality of the Olympians, I'm just saying that it's as camp as having the Village People in the event, although that would be good viewing and for me it would liven up what is a fairly dull sporting spectacle.  Imagine the commentator saying 'that's the Czechoslovakian Native American finishing in a good time but not enough to beat the Romanian dressed as leather bondage guy.  The builder is languishing in last place but happy to give a quote for re-roofing the commentary box'...

I just need to think of how they can liven up the 'skiing a long way on flat ground then shooting some little discs' event.  At the moment I'm considering replacing the little targets with ducks on conveyor belt in a fair ground style?  If you get all five you can have anything off the top shelf or a goldfish in a plastic bag, much better than medals..

Gawd bless the NHS, and all who sail in her.

This week I thought I'd offer some real-time information to anyone reading this with the intention of moving out to the region.

Unless things have changed dramatically since we left the old country (sorry, countries), the NHS is often a hot topic in the news.  I think I'm right in saying there are only three stories about it but they keep on coming round the carousel.

Story 1 - The NHS is underfunded and therefore nurses and junior doctors are working 25 hour days for nothing more than a cup of gruel and a good thrashing should they complain.

Story 2 - The NHS is underfunded and therefore waiting times in A&E are now so long that they recently found the skeleton of King Harold in Hastings Royal Infirmary holding an arrow in one hand and a ticket with number 5956 in the other.  The red electronic display board read 'now serving - 5955'.

Story 3 - The NHS is underfunded however there are now 25 managers for each cleaner and the management structure diagram looks like an inverted pyramid.

In some foreign climes they circumnavigate this thorny problem by following more simple route, they have no free health care at all.  No cash, no doctor.  Fortunately we receive medial insurance via our work, and for the less fortunate the government run hospital here is not too expensive, I think a visit to A & E is about £10, and from our experience it is very good.  I say 'government run' because there are two hospitals, side by side, and the second is part of a Swiss medical group, a visit to A & E here is about £17.50, even with your insurance.

We've visited the private one a few times lately, not for anything serious but just for check ups on minor ailments, so we've had the opportunity to compare and contrast with the UK system.

Your first impression when you get there is that the hospital is actually more like a 5 star hotel.  They have valet parking for goodness sake and if you're going in for a stay, a bell-hop takes your luggage in on a hotel style domed trolly.  You then enter the well appointed reception and the initial thing they ask for is your insurance card.  I don't know what they'd do if you didn't have one?  Whether they would ask for cash up front or gamble on you doing a runner after your treatment?  I guess if you couldn't prove your ability to pay they would send you round the corner to the state hospital and get you to ask for mercy?  

Once you've seen the medical practitioner you pay up, and as the song goes 'the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill.  The bigger the doctor, the bigger the bill'.  His consultation is about £10, but bear in mind with all these costings that they are 20% of the full price as our insurance covers the rest, so the real cost is about £50.  A collection of four blood tests costs us about £17.50, after which you can telephone the physician and if the results require no further investigation or no medication that's it.  If they do need more consideration you have to pay for another consultation.

Here is one big difference.  You see the doctor, he recommends blood tests which you take immediately in a nearby room.  They then test them on site and text you to say they are ready for collection, often the same day or the next morning at the latest, all very quick.  In the UK it used to take a week to get the results of tests, but we weren't paying up front for that, we had been paying since starting work.  Overall the system here seems to work well, just as the NHS seems to work well for most people back home, with the huge difference being in the payment method.  I guess the system in the UK and much of Europe is far more socially inclusive and in the UK being free at source, removes any worries people may have about getting advice on their problems.

The rule of thumb seems to be that if you are thinking of working abroad make sure that your employer is offering medical insurance as part of the deal.  Ours does not cover dental and we are about to visit the dentist for the first time, I'll let you know how that works out!

Next week I thought I'd write a blog based on a 10cc lyric, 'Good morning judge how are you today?', 'Life is a minestrone'?  No, I think I'll go with 'I don't like cricket, I love it'..!