Doing things in Dubai

It'll be very familiar to everyone living here, but possibly an eye-opener to the people outside who read our blogs to find out the reality of living in Dubai. My last few days have been typical of trying to do something in Dubai.

My Residence Visa is due for renewal, which of course means a medical report - a blood test is required.

My sponsor has a small list of clinics from which they will accept reports, the nearest to me being in Jebel Ali Village. I used that last time, it was small, friendly and efficient so I decided to use it again.

The first problem is that working hours are shortened because it's Ramadan, so an early start is the obvious thing. But the RTA-created gridlock in Dubai Marina makes that not an option. I've been talking about that for a while now and it's getting no better, so rather than spending unproductive time sitting in the traffic jam we've been working at home until after 9am to let the worst of it thin out.

(To give you an example of the problem, yesterday Mrs Seabee needed to be at the Dubai Metropolitan on Sheikh Zayed Road at 8am. The taxi she'd ordered for 7am was on time - and it took one and a half hours to travel the first one kilometre in the Marina. She eventually arrived at the Met at eight forty-five - nearly two hours to do a thirty minute trip).

Anyway, back to my medical report. Leaving it to later I fought the marginally better traffic to take Mrs Seabee to her office in Knowledge Village, then headed off to Jebel Ali Village.

The clinic is closed. Shut down. No longer operating. A piece of paper stuck to the door says we have to go to the clinic 'next to Satwa Post Office'.

It's too late now to try that, so I schedule it for tomorrow.

Tomorrow dawns, the usual gridlock-avoiding late start, drop Mrs Seabee at her office and head off for Satwa. The usual traffic snarl, an hour to get along Satwa Road.

There are more than two hundred people, mainly labourers, jammed around the clinic. I can't even get to the door so I give up.

I call my sponsor to check which other clinics I can go to. Iranian Hospital is the nearest choice so I decide to schedule that for the next day.

Today was the next day so I headed back up Al Wasl Road this morning, heavy traffic but moving. I found a parking space at the side of the hospital, was dripping because of today's awful humidity by the time I got to Reception.

A pleasant, smiling, helpful lady directed me to the Blood Test Clinic. The less smiley but equally helpful lady at reception there told me she needed a copy of my passport and Residence Visa plus a passport photo. I always carry plenty of those with me when I try to do anything in Dubai so I handed them over, with my Health Card.

She stapled it all to some forms which included a ticket with a queue number on it. It also had a note that I should expect to be called at a very precise 11.23 (it was now 11.05).

This is one of the huge improvements in Dubai. Until very recently all such places were a huge indisciplined rugby scrum of people pushing and shoving, waving papers about, climbing over others to get to the counter.

We all sat in an orderly manner and I was called to the counter at 11.20.

A small bit of computer work, a form with numbers and stuff on it, pay Dh250 and I was directed to the Blood Test room. Straight into the chair, blood taken, that's it, off you go.

My form tells me to collect my report at 11.30am on Thursday. I had noticed a section of the counter with a sign 'Reports' above it, so that seems to be well organised.

At just after 11.30 I was headed back to the car.

In the end, after all the aggravation of the previous days, a few minutes was all it took.