“We’ve begun your visa renewal process, so here are the papers to get your blood test done,” my office admin guys told me last week. Like an obedient soldier, I end up at the Ministry of Health’s Darsait facility the next day to fulfil necessary obligations. Well, for starters, I just hate to go there. I feel like I am inside ‘Guantanamo Bay’ detention camp.

I walk inside early in the morning only to realise the queue is just a handful (earlier I’ve waited for hours in the queue). Thanking my stars, I wait for my turn. My turn is up, and I handover my papers to the guy at the counter. He hurriedly checks out the papers, glances at me, and says, “One more photo here.” Shit, I say to myself, an effort lost. Since I didn’t have an extra copy of photograph, I return to office. I checked with my admin guys, only to be told, “Normally we paste only two photographs, why did he ask for one more?” Cursing my luck, I made arrangements for one more photo, and next day I was back at the Darsait counter.

Luckily, the same guy checks out the papers, and this time, he looks satisfied. He hands over a token and small tube for blood testing purposes. I ask the security chap for directions to meet the doctor, and he lazily points his hands, and says, “Up”. I knew for sure he didn’t want my question to distract himself from checking out Filipino ladies from top to bottom, with his utmost concentration.

I make my way up, only to stand in a queue of 6-7 guys. I can hear the doctor (a Jordanian probably) say, “shirt utaro” (remove the shirt) to the Indian guys in front. Next he says, “Hath upar karo (lift your hands). When my turn came, the doctor switched over to English, and I don’t know the reason behind his logic. I look 100% Indian though. I raised my hands as per his instruction, and the doctor placed the stethoscope over my chest and back, and said ‘ok’. Next was the ‘blood donation’ part. The Indian nurse does the job quite mechanically, and when she pierced my veins, I didn’t pain much. I assume she gets the volumes daily to be an expert at that. The whole process is quite mechanical, sans human touch. I guess two robots could carry out the job very well with help from ‘Windows DoctorNurse 2008’ software.

All done, I walk down through the stairs, only to see our man (security chap) still gawking intensely at women. He must be having a ball of his life working there, I assume.

I walk back happily thinking that I will have to return to his place again after two years, that only, if I am still here…

I am sure The Sultan Center at Al Amerat wanted to convey the meaning “unbelievable prices”, but the designing company, helped by some poor Arabic to English translation skills, ended up creating a “shocking prices” flyer. And, to some extent, the meaning is synonymous with the current cost of living. Every time I go to a supermarket, I get a “shock” looking at escalating prices!

A report says:

Travellers passing through Hatta border along the Oman-UAE route during the coming holidays season will experience easier crossing over due to a new system put in place to ease up the checking procedure, assures Major-General Mohammad Ahmad Al Marri, director of Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department (DNRD).

As a result of mutual collaboration between the two countries, Oman and the UAE, DNRD recently implemented a one-stop system at Hatta crossing called e-border which connects two countries through high security electronic network, part of UAE’s overall project to facilitate crossing with the neighbouring countries.

The new system in place has reduced considerable waiting time as well as paper work. Hatta border crossers reach 180,000 per month. Travellers passing through the Hatta border during the coming holidays season will experience easier crossing due to the temporary new system put in place to ease up the checking procedure. (more)

According to a source, who works for a leading capital management firm in Singapore, a PCCW top guy has confided with him saying they did meet all the obligations set forth by TRA within the deadline. They are bewildered as to why their claim was rejected at the last hurdle.

The source said a reason for TRA to shun PCCW could be the proposed leveraged buyout of PCCW and the resulting increased leverage at PCCW.

He says:

The major shareholders of PCCW, Richard Li and China Netcom, have proposed to buy all the shares they don’t own from minority shareholders. The fund for the purchase will come from PCCW borrowing more money from banks led by HSBC. If the deal is concluded, PCCW will no longer be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and PCCW’s financial position will become weaker due to the increased debt and its debt credit rating will likely be downgraded. They just announced the proposed buyout on November 4.

Related read: Richard Li’s New PCCW Ploy

Omantel filters are at it again. This time the axe has fallen on http://www.expressindia.com/, the website of The Indian Express, one of the top five English dailies in India. The action of filter is some what skewed – the site has no design, and story links are all over the page with Omantel gyan at the top. P, a of the reader of this blog sent a mail stating my blog was unavailable for sometime early yesterday morning. I guess it was part of the “blockade” which was reported in OCB. Strangely Omantel has been tweaking around with Google products for sometime now – last month blogger.com and gmail.com was in the firing line for a few days. I heard even Gtalk has been blocked along with Skype and Yahoo voice chat (I am not very sure about Skype).

Except for VoIP services, I am 100% sure Omantel doesn’t intend to block blogger, google images, gmail, etc. It just happens unintentionally due to lack of expertise at handling state-of-the-art filters. All said and done, Omantel is no where near its cruel counterpart –– Etisalat – who have a history of blocking a variety of social networking tools.

Till then…enjoy!