Abu dhabi trip part 2

Once at Chilo's (my long suffering girlfriend in case you didn't know) I was quickly acustomed to the smell, filth and general run down state that is THAT building in which she and her family live, with a sprinkling of others crammed in there as to lower the enormous and downright disgusting rent they have to pay to live in such squaller. (excuse me if I spelt that wrong, don't have a spell check on the iPhone and after all, I didn't just fail English in school, I did it with a tripple failure with honours!)

Allow me to explain Eldorado Cinema building (where Chilo, her brother and sister live) for you. It comprises of two blocks, A and B with of course, a cinema at the bottom connecting both blocks. Each has 18 floors with 8 apartments on each floor. 4 or 5 years ago the rent for this place per year was approximately 15-20,000 dirhams. In those days I'd imagine the situation in each apartment was much like that of Chilo's place; There was a principle family or tennent with a room rented out to 1 or two people making each appartment have an occupancy of 5 or so for a two bedroom flat.

Then something happened, I'm not sure what it was but demand became high for flats. Probably a lot of older buildings were demolished, new ones weren't being build quick enough and the populus increased tenfold! So the greedy fuckers, left unchecked, unregulated and unsympathetic to situation of the tennents they'd had all these years were in, they increased the rent. So much so, that as it stands even now with the economic downturn the way it is, it's 90,000 dirhams per year (£16,000) Yes folks, you could rent a 4 bedroom detatched house, with a garage and huge garden anywhere in UK for that and would likely to have a lot of change!!! So as a result, they've had to cram in 11 people into a two bed apartment. Did I say it was small, no? IT'S FUCKING SMALL! And did I say it's hot in there, no? IT'S FUCKING HOT AS A WHORE'S MINGE!!!

There was air conditioning once, but after it kept breaking down costing thousands per repair that THEY would have to pay for themselves AND for a techncian that only the landlord would appoint, no second opinions or fuck all, they decided to just use fans. Oh Lordy is it stuffy in there. It's got so bad in this building that even the cockroaches are lobbying for better living conditions at the ministy of manuncupality!

Didn't I mention there were loads of Cockroaches, no? THERE'S FUCKING LOADS OF FUCKING COCKROACHES!!!! When you get up at night to go for a piss, you feel pissed because the floor is moving around you in the dark! You move anything be it a mug, plate, cereal box, a cupboard door, anything and you'll see several scurry away from you from where they were hiding.

And the powers that be get away with it because they know that should one or all of the current tennants say, "fuck you and your shitty, cockroach infested, over priced piece of stuffy shit you very audaciously call a FLAT, I'm outta here!" there'd be 10 people willing to make do immediately behind. Not only that, but where would they then go? 90% of available apartments would be the same, perhaps worse! And that's a big IF they could find one.

The only choice would be to up sticks and return home. But there the situation is arguably worse than in Abu Dhabi; At least there they all have full time employment!

It really sucks to be anything non Emirati or western origin in UAE and no mistake.

I've still not spoke about my holiday yet, but I will come to that in the next post... Maybe.


-- Post From My iPhone