Run for Your Visa

One of new aspects of my life as an expatriate is a concern on visa. I think I am better off dealing with UAE visa laws compare to Saudi Arabia visa laws. I heard in Saudi Arabia, one not only need visa to come to Saudi but expatriate also need visa to get out from Saudi Arabia. I don't know whether this is true but if it is, that is really a headache.

In UAE, visa is issued for various categories of visit and stay. There are visit visa, tourist visa, multiple entry visa, residence visa and transit visa. Apart from visa, tourists and expatriates require sponsors who will apply visa on their behalf. Like in my case, my sponsor for residence visa is my employer. But Malaysians tourist are lucky because our government has a reciprocal agreement with UAE whereby Malaysian tourist will be entitled to 30 days free visa on arrival in UAE. So for Malaysians, they don't have to find local sponsor to apply for their visit visa in UAE.

A common culture for expatriates in Dubai is during school holidays, many expatriates bring in their wives, children and families to come over for long vacation in Dubai. I am one of them. My wife and son are staying in Dubai for a 4 months vacation. For a stay more than 30 days I am supposed to apply for a special long visit visa for my wife and son which costs around AED500 each.

However there is a cheaper way to do it. Instead of applying for that long visit visa, peoples here go for a visa run. Literally it means running to the border, get out from the country and come back in with a new visit visa. This privilege is only accorded to a handful of countries lke UK, USA, Singapore and Malaysia. It sounds easy? But I have to do it every 40 days. And that is boring..

Desert tree

So here are the steps for a visa run in Dubai, UAE:

1) Drive to the border. Don't forget to bring passport. There are 3 popular borders from Dubai ie, Hatta, Musandam and Al Ain. These are UAE borders with Sultanate of Oman. I use Hatta border because it is close to my house;
2) Present passport to the immigration counter. Get the exit stamp;
3) Drive to Oman border post. On the way, there will be car inspection. Should not be a problem if you are not carrying drugs or dead body;
4) At Oman border, present your passport to the counter. If you really want to visit Oman, you have to buy car insurance. But if just to renew visa, you can simply tell the officer you want to renew visa;
5) Pay AED60 per person and get visit visa to Oman;
6) Make a U-turn to Dubai and drive to Dubai border;
7) Get a visit visa stamp from Dubai immigration for 30 days. You are done.

A straight road to Oman border

Last weekend I made a record of 3 hours to complete the whole run. I felt lazy to do it in the beginning because my wife and I will be leaving Dubai for UK anyway, this coming Friday for our Eid vacation. But I didn't want to have any problem with the immigration for overstaying without valid visa, so I did the run.

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it is not.
It's a visa and it runs out fast.

Julie Burchilli
British Columnist

Ramadhan in Dubai

Muslims all over the world are enjoying the holy month of Ramadhan from August 22nd until September 19th or 20th, depending on the sighting of the moon crescent to mark celebration of Eid-al-Fitri. For me and my family this year we celebrate the Ramadhan for the first time in Dubai.

There are a few differences on how Ramadhan is celebrated in Dubai compared to Malaysia. The first thing I noticed is the shortened office hours. Whilst in Malaysia, government offices and some private companies close at 4pm, here government closes at 2pm and private companies at 3pm. It is a very short working hours for me to finish my usual day's workload. But on the other hand, I spend more quality time with family at home either preparing Iftar or looking for restaurants around Dubai.

There is no Ramadan Bazaar for public in UAE. But I am not deprived of Ramadan Bazaar experience here due to Malaysian Association's Ramadan Bazaar every Friday in Abu Dhabi and Dubai selling home made Malaysian cuisines. I have been to both Abu Dhabi and Dubai Malaysian Ramadan Bazaar. The peoples and the foods were amazing. Ramadan Bazaar is truly the Malaysian thing which cannot be found elsewhere.

There is no 'moreh' or refreshment after solat Taraweh. The solat Taraweh in a mosque near my apartment is performed for 20 rakaat. The Imam recite long Quranic verses with no zikr and praise to the 4 Caliph between the rakaat similar to the style in IIUM Mosque.

Iftar buffet. WOW ! there are a lot around hotels and restaurants in Dubai. I can find any type of buffet to suit my appetite. However I have never been to any of them, because I think it is too much for me. In fact, there is one international restaurant in Atlantis Hotel (the famous hotel in The Palm) which sell Malaysian dishes for Ramadan Iftar. I have not been there but I read that the price starts from AED400 per person. Wuhu...maybe next time or maybe not !

Iftar Tent. This one I have never seen it in Malaysia. Maybe some places in Kuala Lumpur but not a custom yet. But here, I find a lot of companies and wealthy individuals sponsoring Iftar tents for the public. So everybody irrespective of background and race can freely come and enjoy whatever dishes supplied under the tents during Iftar. This is Ramadan culture in Dubai. I have never been to any tent so far, but am planning to, inshallah.

Respect for the fasting time. In Dubai the laws require all restaurants including food court to close during fasting hours. Some restaurants which are allowed to serve foods must operate its business behind full curtains. Not only restaurants are closed, the public are not allowed to eat and drink in the open. This applies to non-Muslims as well. Restaurants and food court are allowed to take orders starting from 6 o'clock but the foods can only be enjoyed after Iftar time. The other day I was waiting for Iftar time in a food court and an Indian couple behind me started to eat their meals when it arrived. They were quickly been told off by the mall's security guard to wait until Iftar time.

Eid preparation. I have not seen any special Eid promotion. Most of the sale advertisement promote their discount as Ramadan sale. It was not as grand as in Malaysia. Maybe it is not the time yet.

Ramadan drama. I am not referring to real life drama here, but the special tv soap for the month of Ramadan. Here we have one drama titled "Siraa' ala al Reemal"(Struggle in the Sand) which is a UAE-based production, aired in Dubai One channel at 7.00 pm. The story was based on the poetry and imagination of Sheikh Muhammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (Ruler if Dubai) himself, revolving around the life and struggle of groups of bedouin. His poem was beautiful, not bad at all. But at the same time my wife and I have been watching a very addictive Malaysian soap as well titled "Nur Kasih". You can watch this drama in Catch Up TV in TV3 website. This drama is very touching and made me cried with some of it scenes and dialogue. It is a good drama to exercise my tear glands.

I look forward to enjoy the rest of Ramadan days. God bless us all.

Ramadan Kareem...Ramadan Mubarak !!

Plans and Ramadhan

Everybody in UAE is rushing now to complete all urgent jobs, disputes or deals before Ramadhan. My clients tried to close deal or settle disputes as soon as possible. This is because peoples here reserve Ramadhan as a month to focus on ibadah, family and relationship with friends and clients. Nobody really want to talk business or quarrel during the holy month except for networking. This month is not only for fasting and attending tarawih prayer but also strengthening relationship with peoples and helping the needy.

I personally feel Ramadhan to be a very lively and busy month with family and friends. I hope I will get that same feeling again here in Dubai as this is going to be the first time my family and I spending Ramadhan outside Malaysia. I really thank Allah for making me able to bring my family here.

One of the Ramadhan things in Malaysia is the food bazaar. Recently the UAE Malaysians Association has been planning on having our Malaysian Ramadhan Bazaar in Dubai. Although I dont really need that much of food for Iftar or Sahur but the food bazaar will certainly be a good session to meet friends and create new one. Especially for expatriates, our friends are our families now.

I have also been busy planning certain personal projects this month. We will be travelling to new places during our upcoming Eid holidays and I am planning to acquire some things by end of this year.

I just hope that Allah Almighty will give His approval and blessing to me, as always, to carry out all these plans, inshallah.

Ramadhan Karim to all my blog readers !

yours truly

Deira Fish Market

The weather in Dubai is very bad today. It is not only hot and humid but dusty with a visibility of around 100 meters. They say this dust come from nothern Iraq. I hope a strong wind will blow away all these dusts soon. My wife and I are already coughing a lot since last week. Thankfully my son Adrin doesn't suffer the cough. I have been drinking a lot of water to clear my itchy throat.

Yesterday my wife and I executed our weekend's project. It was a trip to Deira Fish Market. The hassle was to go there early in the morning in order to escape the heat. We arrived at the market at 9.00 a.m. It was too late. The temperature was a soaring 39 degrees celcius. There was no parking available in the market compound. I have to drop my wife and son at the market and parked further 300 metres away in Hyatt Hotel. I walked to the market from my car, and I still regret it until now, because it was so hot that I bled my nose rightaway !

However our discovery in the fish market was worth the trip. My wife being a Melanau loves fishes very much. The Deira Fish Market IS the place for the freshest catch in Dubai. To our surprise we also found some species of cockles and fish that is available in Oya, Sarawak. We bought Ikan Lumik and later prepared it with Sarawak sago for our lunch. My wife even prepared her first Dubai umai which was really spicy to me. I told my wife that she should suggest other Melanaus in her hometown to come and work in Dubai, because of the similarity in the fishes.

Because of the heat, we totally forgot to take out camera and snap photos. I was in fact became clumsy a bit trying to finish everything very fast and escape to an air-conditioned environment.

I bought a half mackerel fish. At home we cut it to fillet and I personally prepared a lemon butter mackerel for lunch. The taste was quite satisfactory..hehe. Really, I think I did a good dish yesterday. I like it.

We plan to go to the Fish Market again next week to stock up fresh fishes. My wife's face is beamed up with happiness now that she can eat the freshest fishes again.

"All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws"

Chinese proverb

Sharing

Ever since I bought a Macbook laptop and subscribed to internet at home, I am wired to the cyberworld almost 24 hours of my daily life. This could be literally true considering that last night I felt asleep infront of my Macbook and woke up this morning with my hand still on the keypad. I hope I didn't send out any nonsense email whilst unconscious. I am connected at the office and even can google whilst walking, using a blackberry. Indeed I am living in two worlds now.

One of the things which fascinates me lately is on the sharing concept of the internet users worldwide. Like the Mac applications that I am using now, I didn't have to spend any single cent to use the additional software, as I can get it free using the sharewares and freewares abundant in the web. Not only that, the inventors of the software also make sure that the users get all the latest fix and upgrade from time to time. How cool is that !

I naturally tend to be "overdosed" with my new-found hobby. I have long heard about torrent files sharing but never had the time to learn and use it. With the plenty of spare time at home now, I had the chance to use torrent application and ...what a great discovery ! There are several torrent hosting websites in the net that you can choose from. These websites host the files 'torrent-ed' by the users or act as search engines to locate torrent files in the world wide web. My favourite search engines have been isohunt, mininova and pirate bay.



As a background I am a movie maniac. I have spent thousands on purchasing VCD, DVD and VHS tapes. I was also addicted to DVD rental. Sometimes I rented DVDs on daily basis. But with torrent sharing network, I feel like I am the son of a DVD shopowner. I can download any movie I want for free and the picture quality is generally very sharp and high. So far my average downloads are 2 movies per day. I am so addicted to watching all the downloaded movies that I watch a movie before going to work and another movie before going to bed, ....sometimes two movies.

The plus point is that sharing movies in torrent network does not give me the guilty feeling of contributing to piracy industry. Simply because I dont have to pay anything and the guy who uploaded the movie to the network, I believe, would have bought original copy of the movie judging from the picture quality. Yes I will not be contributing moneys to the directors' pockets, but I am not stealing money from them too or give money to the piracy bosses. I am just sharing with my friends. On top of that I sometime donate to them for being very generous friends. So my simple mind says sharing is better than stealing.

Really, I feel very grateful to live in this era !

"It is appalingly obvious our technology has exceeded our humanity"

Albert Einstein

First Jamming with the Abu Dhabi Gang

Last Thursday relived my memory of the busy life as a musician juggling between work and studio when I was in KL. But this time I experienced it in Dubai when I tried to finish my work at 6.30pm to be at the studio at 8.30pm. In between I must get back to my apartment to pick up my bass. I decided not to bring and keep my bass in the car since the temperature was hot and that could affect the guitar's wood.

To make matter interesting, I lost my way to the studio. The studio was oddly located inside a warehouse in an industrial area. But I like the studio's setting because it looked like a garage studio. It had the "homey" ambience and "discreet & underground" feeling to it. I memorised the route based on Google Earth map but in reality the routes were messed up with diversions and construction sites. At the end I arrived 1 hour late at the studio. (To Dewangga Sakti gang this all sounds too familiar huh..hehe)

The jam session was arranged by my friend Azli (the drummer). I got to know him in the Iron Maiden concert last February. Azli is actually a familiar face in the circle of performing art back in Kuala Lumpur. He has performed with acoustic bands like Siul Murba, Akar Gita Estetika and Swakarya etc. He is also a member of the Dubai Drums of the World, an 18 pax ensemble which performs every year during the Dubai Jazz Festival. He is the only Malaysian with a set of Gendang Sunda in Dubai ! He has been in Dubai for 4 years now. The other musicians were Zaidi (aka JD the pilot) on guitar, Mie on guitar, Ida (Zaidi's wife) on keyboard, Hanizan and Zaki (both sang that night). All of them hail from Abu Dhabi.

I had really a good time jamming with them. It was a sort of breaking the ice session with new friends but through our instruments. The songs "destroyed" by us that night were:

1) Green Tinted Sixties Mind - Mr Big
2) Hati Emas - M Nasir
3) Gerhana - M Nasir
4) Yellow - Coldplay
5) Clock - Coldplay
6) Californication - RHCP
7) Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
8) Larut - Dewa 19
9) I Will Survive - Cake (this was played impromptu when I was running the bass line to warm up my fingers and suddenly everybody followed...and I said jalan !)
10) Fade to Black - Metallica

It was an exciting introductory jam with new friends. I look forward to know all of them in person. That night we could not chat for long since the jam finished at 12.30am and they all had to rush back to Abu Dhabi. But I can tell they are very talented musicians. They also own several guitars each. I look forward to see their collection.

Azli

Mie

JD

I felt a little bit awkward heading back home after a jam session without any teh tarik session. Because to me the teh tarik sessions before and after the jam are integral and as important as the jam itself.

But it was a great fun and my first jam in Dubai with totally new friends. I really want to do it again !

yours truly

As good as I am, I am nothing without my band

Steven Tyler

Making a (feel) good decision

The month of June always inspires me to look back and asses the trail of life which I have left behind. Times fly very fast since I first set my foot in Dubai in October 2008. Now it is going to be another 4 months to complete a 1 year cycle of my life as an expat in this great city.

As my life settles day by day in this new place which I started to call home, there are many decisions which forced me to make up my mind on my commitment to my new life. It is easier to advise a client than to advise myself. Because to me the struggle is not only to ensure that I make a good decision but the decision must come with a feel good factor with it. It is about making a decision and feel happy about it.

One of such decisions is as simple as whether I should buy a car or continue on renting. On 6 June 2009 I attended the most awaited event of my life in Dubai i.e my driving test. I passed the test and now I have a valid UAE driving licence which also entitles me to buy a car here. I can write a lengthy opinion if a client ask me on the advantages and disadvantages of buying or renting a car in Dubai. But when it comes to me making that decision, the hard facts alone are simply not enough for me. I need something to spark the good feeling behind the decision. I dont know what it is, but I must continue looking for that factor.

Anyway, maybe there is no such factor in the first place. Maybe it is just the overwhelming anticipation of going home this July. So let me not run to the car showroom but instead take a lazy relax leisurely stroll whilst listening very hard to the beats of my heart.

The risk of wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision

Maimonides

Spanish philosopher
1135 - 1204