Good Bye Abu Dhabi! مع السلامة أبو ظبي

Ma'a salama Abu Dhabi (مع السلامة أبو ظبي)! Good bye Abu Dhabi! After 5 months in the emirates, I will be leaving tomorrow. It has been an interesting working experience - getting to work with people of different nationalities and diverse backgrounds. There were good and bad times, challenging and light moments. The desert environment is harsh especially now in summer but hey I am proud to have survived it all! I got to visit Abu Dhabi and even Dubai - the paradise of Middle East. I had an enjoyable desert safari and met some new friends. But at the end, nothing beats home and Kuala Lumpur, here I come! Back to home! By the 28th noon time I would have landed at KLIA alas.

Malaysia - truly a food paradise

One of the things every Malaysian overseas would miss the most - Malaysian food. Yup... we are so blessed, coming from a food paradise - a place where we are spoilt for choices - huge variety of food at cheap prices. So after months of chicken sashilik, salad, spagetti and dhal, dhal, dhal.... I can now go back to Malaysia and go on an eating spree. All the Malaysian food I miss so much - nasi lemak, dim sum, curry mee, pan mee, chee cheong fun, egg tarts, duck rice, yong tau fu, laksa, char kuey teow, fried carrot cake.... oohhh the list is too long. Even the roti canai and dhal taste better back home! So, Malaysia here I come - revenge time on food! hahaha.... And to my friends who are still stuck in Dubai - enjoy more dhal! Your time to go home will come soon...

Poor camels

I have some sad news about some camels struck by lightning recently in Abu Dhabi. This happened near a town called Gayathi which is quite near where I am now. Here's the story from Gulf News:

16 camels killed by lightning
Abu Dhabi: A bolt of lightning killed 16 camels near a farmland off Ghayathi in the Western Region yesterday. The herd owned by Mohammad A'sheer Al Mazroui was stationed near a sand dune behind his farmland, 20 km from Ghayathi. The local Arabic daily Al Khaleej quoted Al Mazroui as saying that the camels were grazing at the pasture when the sky suddenly became cloudy. Soon it started to drizzle and a small group of camels broke away from the herd and climbed the sand dune nearby. Lightning and thunder shook the area and lightning felled 16 camels.


It has been rather cloudy the past few days and some parts of the Eastern Region of Al Ain actually had thunderstorms. The weather has cooled down a bit but remains above 40degC. Meanwhile, humidity climbs and it's feeling like a sauna here - sticky!

Flight out on Wednesday

It is the summer holiday season in UAE and it was difficult to get a flight out. Especially if the destination is Malaysia since this is after all voted the Best Summer Holiday Destination! Anyway, I got a flight on Qatar Airways on Wednesday night which will bring me once again to Doha for a short transit before flying back to KL. I should be reaching KLIA at noon time on the 28th. This is pretty much 5 months since I first left KLIA on the 29th January.

Now that we are able to get Final Completion for the project, there is really nothing much to do on-site. I am packing up and roaring to go! Everyone here has said that I was very lucky to miss the full-blown summer by just a few days. Come July, the entire Gulf region would be offering a complimentary sauna to everyone. Not the best of times to be around.

Final completion soon

Alas, after 5 months of hard work, the final punch item was resolved yesterday. There was some initial setbacks in the morning when the new communication line installed for the gas chromatograph did not work. But a few phone calls later and lots of hard work, the system was put back in service with the punch item issue solved. All in all, this last bit of work took 11 hours but when it was done, there was a sigh of relief. Even the final most worrying job of clearing all the site office foundations was completed. The last signs of Siemens is now removed from site!

With that, we can now apply for final acceptance of completion from the customer. This also means my tour of duty in UAE ends here. I am still waiting for my flight to be confirmed. I am trying to get a flight on the 26th but so far I'm only able to confirm one on the 27th. Anyway, I have to start packng up and saying my goodbyes to all my customer engineers.

The end is near

Just got confirmation from my project manager today. 25th June would be my last day of work here in UAE. Expect to fly out on 26th June and be back to Malaysia! 3 days short of 5 months in UAE!

Listen with your ears

Finally a Friday I could spend lazing around at camp, away from work – doing absolutely nothing. A time to relax and cool down. As I lay on my bed not willing to rise, I kept my eyes closed and let my ears exercise its senses. What did I hear? I could hear…

• The air-conditioning running with occasional sound of the compressor cutting in. Not only mine, but other neighbors as the entire UAE is now droning with air-conditioning running 24hrs a day.
• Water dripping from the leaking shower in my bathroom. It has been leaking since day one and repaired once. But it just keeps on leaking. Water is wasted in this water-scarce nation.
• Kittens purring. The mother cat of the camp has just given birth to a litter of kittens and they like to hang around under my cabin during the day time.
• Birds chirping away happily unperturbed by the hot weather as they dodge around in the shades of the trees.
• Myself breathing – inhaling & exhaling. Breathe in… breathe out. The sound of life.
• The sound of email coming into my inbox. I’ve kept my laptop switched ON through the night. My inbox has been very busy nowadays with emails running around UAE-Malaysia-Germany-Italy. It’s hard to imagine a world without internet nowadays. We held ransom by this technology!

The ears are always under-utilized. We tend to keep it closed to sounds and voices that we do not want to hear. There are always background noises that we miss out in our hurried life. But if we just sit down a moment, close the eyes and allow our ears to do its job it’s amazing how much background noises escape our attention at other times.

Black and White

I'm really getting darker... tanned by the summer sunshine of UAE. Check out this latest picture of me. See the contrast in skin color? My face & arms vs my legs! (Sigh) will take some time to reverse this when I get back to KL!

Beside me by the way is my Tunisian friend. I don't really understand everything he says most of the time since his English is jumbled up with Arabic and French. Yup, Tunisia is French-speaking. And the way he describes it, Tunisia seems to be some paradise! But all I know is this Tunisian man is very friendly, helpful and cheerful all the time. Nice to have such people around sometimes to give a lively atmosphere!

What is on my mind lately? What else? To go back home! Home to KL! But before I can do that, I still have lots to settle here on-site - to clear up the last bits and pieces. Sounds simple but when you actually get down to it, it can be taxing and energy-consuming. But as some may say - there's no such thing as "easy money"!

Floras in the Middle East

Rare Moments

A cloudy day is a very rare occurence in UAE. This picture was one that I took couple of months back during better times!

The cyclone Gonu which was supposed to bring us some rain has been a total dissappointment. It lashed the northern emirate of Fujairah causing some floodings. But for the rest of us here, it only brought down the temperature slightly to 38degC instead of the usual 45degC. And that was it... no rain, no drizzle, no cloudy day. There was one particular day though when humidity was exceptionally high because of Gonu. Could you imagine a fog at 30degC? That was a first for me anyway as I've only known fog to appear on cold days and 30 ain't cold.

Actually I remembered someone telling me (maybe in geography class) that deserts are very hot in the day time but very cold at night. As far as I'm concerned, it's terribly hot at day time and hot at night.

Cis, bedebah!

I remembered the Malay phrase 'Cis, bedebah!' from some Malay text books during schooling years. I suddenly thought of it today as I connected that phrase to a crane contractor in UAE known as CIS.

When I first started off as an engineer, and had to deal with contractors I tend to rely on them for 'expert' advice and in many ways trusted them to provide their best services. I had known many contractors who had done remarkable high-quality jobs. Generally, I have always maintained a cordial relationship with them as we never know when they will be my client in the future. After all, the engineering world is not really that big. As such, I've tried being accommodating and understanding at all times. I believe I still am most of the time and I hope that my contractors had a nice working relationship with me. Although I admit, as times pass by, I am no longer such a 'young ciku' who would just take anything that comes to me as it is.

There are limits to my patience and as some may have seen I am not a pleasant man when I am angry! This was exactly what I felt today with CIS. If I had my way, I'll make sure this company is blacklisted from all Siemens project here. I've not vented my anger verbally and in written for quite some time and today I did not hold back at all. Sometimes, the only way to deal with unprofessional, unreliable, untrustworthy and just plain stupid people is to be bloody nasty. I am seldom like this even when dealing with adverse situation - I believe hardly anyone who had worked with me had seen me angry at work. Most of the times, being nasty does not help to solve the problem. But it sure is a good 'pressure relief valve' and it also makes known that I mean business. It's just too bad that CIS bedebah had to get it from me today!

Cyclone to hit UAE!

Guess what everyone? Tropical cyclone Gonu is about to hit UAE after battering neighboring Oman. Well according to the newspapers, it's going to bring thunderstorms throughout most of the country between this Thursday and Saturday. I hope this means my area as well! We badly need some heavy rains to cool down the temperature here. The apparent temperature has reached 51degC today in Abu Dhabi! The high temperature is okay except that by now the humidity occassionaly creeps up and that is unbearable. By the way, the picture here is that of what happened in Oman during the last storm in March!

Had a phone conversation with my project manager in Offenbach, Germany yesterday. Will be having a meeting with him next week. After that he will be meeting the client MD for final discussions. Hopefully, I'll get to confirm my departure date after that! Meanwhile, I'm excited that a cyclone is going to hit here! How nice!

Opulence & Wealth

Call it extravagance, call it opulence but the scale of mega projects in Dubai never ceases to create wonders. There are so much construction going on there nowadays that 15% of the world's cranes are situated in Dubai. This one hell of a big construction site is a sign of Dubai's wealth. I don't really think they need all these. But they are rich and have too much oil money to spend and so be it. In today's blog, I'll just show you some pics of these mega projects - some of which are beginning to take shape.

^ Dubai Towers

^ Dancing Towers

^ Burj Dubai (Tallest building in the world)

^ Trump Hotel

^ Infinity Tower

^ The World

^ Palm Jumeirah