Well, I wanted an adventure I guess

Their poxy fucking sign-up website is a heap of total fucking shit. For a company whose entire business is, broadly, “the internet”, you’d think they’d be able to write a simple fucking 3-stage site that lets new punters create an account and existing ones buy a bit of wireless credit. But fucking no, they can’t. I got lost in a maze of never-ending redirects to pages I’d already seen, confounded by fully-filled-in forms (even the optional fields!) that claimed to be missing vital/required information, and just generally frustrated as FUCK. I use a Mac, which I figured was the cause of all the trouble – lots of companies employ people to make websites who think there’s only one type of computer and one type of browser out there – and thought I’d hit paydirt when finally I flicked on Opera and managed to get it to work out who I was, from my existing ADSL account info, and accept my credit card number for 120 minutes of access. I got to a page called “ThankYou.html” which contained a Thank You message and some instructions on how to connect.

I followed those instructions and it doesn’t know who I am and wants me to create a new account. Only now even Opera doesn’t have a fucking clue who I am. All in all I wasted about, I dunno, 40 minutes on this shit? Just so I could get online and check the Man Utd score, read my emails, just generally do a bit of meaningless browsing. Really I should have been enjoying everything this lounge has to offer, after all I’ve bloody paid for this holiday and should be larging it. I know it’s only day 2, flight 3, but I feel like I’ve been an idiot already :-(

Well, I wanted an adventure I guess

Hmm. the blog entry prior to the lounge rage one wasn’t as explicit as I meant it to be. The point I was (badly) trying to make was not that I was accessing the Internet from a plane; the point was I was accessing the Internet using my mobile from a stationary plane parked on a taxi/runway at Abu Dhabi airport, some 90 minutes or so (IIRC) after I was supposed to have arrived in Dubai. This shows what happened (in a somewhat cack-handed way; basically my 0730 arrival turned into a 1044 arrival).

more later. I need some kip. I’ve shitloads to write, but the worst thing is that flickr is banned in Dubai so I can’t upload any photos until I get back to Blighty on Wednesday :-(

What a breakfast it was ’n all. I’d put up a photo, but, well, flickr + Dubai… it was grapefruit juice, tea, a bowl of bran, a yoghurt, a huge fruit salad, some toast, some croissants, and a plate of scrambled eggs with 2 sausages, tomato, hash browns, and I’m sure there was something else too but I can’t remember what it was. Room service for teh win anyway. I’ll just be more careful with my writing (perhaps I’ll write NINE) if I get it tomorrow too.

The flight was called at gate 8 and I went there, got on, took my seat. 14k is a rear-facing seat in the Club World cabin, on the right hand side of the aircraft. It’s also a window seat directly over the wing. You have to clamber over whoever’s in 15J if you want to get up for any reason, especially if the occupant stretches out full length pretty much as soon as you’re airborne, which on Saturday he did. But I didn’t want to get up anyway, so it didn’t matter.

I love sitting in a rear-facing seat. Take-off and landing feel so different, much nicer, but it’s also probably just because it’s such a relative novelty. This is only the second time I’ve ever done it, and I know full well that the vast majority of people never get to do it. I also know some people hate it, which is totally alien to me.

Before take-off I was offered a newspaper – took the Guardian – and a drink. I chose orange juice but could have had water or champagne. Also got handed a menu for the food service which started pretty sharpish after we got in the air. I had salmon for starter then fish for main too, followed by some cheese and biscuits and a couple of chocolates, all washed down by 2 cans of London Pride. Meanwhile I watched the film Wah Wah, Richard E Grant’s directorial debut I think, an autobiographical flick about his life in end-of-an-Empire Swaziland in the late 60s/early 70s. Good film, but I was a bit put off by the main character looking an awful lot like Pikey Jones.

Anyway. I’m sat in my seat watching the map thing say we’re 10 minutes (or was it 10 miles? I forget) from Dubai and then.. we start turning around and heading back over the sea. Eh? What’s going on here? We’re not even circling, just heading away. Curious. Captain comes on the tannoy again and says “As you’ve probably noticed, I promised we’d be landing about now, but instead we’re heading in the opposite direction”. Well, at least we’ve not been hijacked. We do land eventually, about 50 minutes later than expected and in the wrong airport. Turns out a bad fog had descended on Dubai, reducing visibility way too much and rather than hang around in the air wasting “valuable fuel” we got permission to nip down to Abu Dhabi.

If I get there, that is. We’re on the ground for an awfully long time. While getting refuelled we’re told to make sure we have our seatbelts unfastened, which strikes me as odd and is never explained. I’ll have to go look that one up. But it’s good that the in-flight entertainment is on, and I watch episodes of the Simpsons, Frasier, and My Family – which to my shame I actually enjoyed. I put it down to sleep deprivation. The weather at Abu Dhabi looks to me like it’s getting mistier too. Will we be allowed to leave here?

Dubai is an enormous building site. There are cranes and construction projects everywhere. There is also masses of traffic, and my driver takes me a really long way round to the hotel to avoid the main motorway that, he tells me, it’s almost impossible to avoid using in Dubai itself. We go past it and it really is totally packed. I’m told our journey will probably take about an hour, but we’ll be on the move rather than just stuck; it would be an hour in a jam going that way.

I think there are 3 types of people in big demand, making big money, in Dubai at the moment. Firstly, construction workers. Secondly, car dealerships. But the people making the most money must surely be the guys who create artists’ impressions (ie, err, artists) of what these buildings are all going to look like once they’re done. Because the view, any view, isn’t nice at the moment.

The hotel looks ace. I perch myself on a seat next to the window looking out on the pool area, which I note has an awful lot of shade, and a bar. The lady from check-in comes and gives me my passport, which I’d left at the desk, doh! Mind you that’s par for the course: my credit card had been turned down on first attempt too, FFHS. By now I’m really flaking out, knackered and feeling a bit ill really. They told me they’d definitely have a room before 2pm and come get me when it was ready. This would be handy because I’ve no money to get another drink or something to eat, and no room number to charge it to. But 2pm arrives with no further contact, so I go back to the desk where they say oh yeah, sorry, here’s your key and room number.

I go out onto the balcony for all of 10 seconds before deciding it’s way too bloody hot, and retreat back indoors to do a bit of channel surfing, read the hotel guide and the local Time Out. After a while I figure it’s time for a pint. This hotel has a bunch of bars and I plump for “Studio One”, a ‘sports bar’. Seat duly grabbed I order a pint of lager and a plate of fish and chips. It’s just before 10pm which makes it happy hour, half price drinks, woohoo! Chelsea -vs- Charlton is on one TV, women’s doubles at the US Open on another, and a few Arab guys are playing darts. They’re as far from Phil Taylor as it’s possible to be.

So what’s going on, then? It’s a lovely hotel and the staff are all friendly but, well, something’s not right. They forgot to tell me my room was ready, the complimentary wine is missing (I wouldn’t have known it existed had the label not been here!), the food took forever and they served me breakfast at 0400 instead of 0900. WTF?

Anyway. It’s 0637 now and I think I’m going to grab another couple of hours kip before trying to get myself on a shuttle into the town, although truth be told I might not even bother. A massage and a swim and a few hours reading a book outside by the pool might suffice. Could do with a photo of the Burj though.