This week was quite a stressful one for me. There were deadlines. There were meetings. There were even long distance phone calls to Angola where I spent 5 minutes trying to get the person on the other end to under stand who I was. But nothing compared to Monday.....
I spent nearly the entire working day of Monday at Emirates ID trying to get my card. In case you don't remember from my previous post, the Emirates ID is a new initiative by the UAE in which all citizens and Expats are required to get Identification cards that will in time (in theory) take over as drivers license and e-gate cards.
So back to my day at EID. I have say the experience wasn't as bad as I thought. I did have to wake up at 5:30 just to wait an hour and a half to get into the building. Then I spent another four hours sitting and waiting for my number to be called. Fortunately I went with a friend so we chatted while I knitted. When I finally got called, the Emiratie helping me had heard of Oregon before! I KNOW! He started listing off the starting line up of the Portland Trail Blazers and I just stared back blankly nodding and thinking to my self if only he preferred college football.
The other good thing that came out of spending 6 hours waiting for my 15 minute appointment was that I got a LOT of knitting done. I made great progress on my Noro Striped Scarf II... but I'll post those pics later.
The only feed back I would like to provide to the kind Emirates ID people is perhaps you would like to provide a little bit more adequate parking. I just don't see a sand ditch as being a proper area to have parking. Especially when you have a perfectly good parking lot that is just not accessible from the road yet because seriously why have a parking lot that people can drive up into right? Nope instead you make them park in the sand ditch and walk up the sand hill to get into the building.
But what did they do right when they built the building you ask? Well they put it next door to a McDonald's, And that my friends makes up for all the sand hills and all the ditches I ever had to walk through.
Showing posts with label emirates ID. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emirates ID. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, November 3, 2008
Emirates ID Cards are heeeerrreeee!!!!
in case you haven't heard yet (UAE people) we now need to get an Emirates ID in order to be a legal living/working person in any of the seven Emirates in UAE. :::sigh:::
this sigh doesn't come from that fact that they are asking for everyone to get and Emirates ID (because there are Pros) but because they have given the people of this country until December 31st, 2008 to complete this process. there are two ways of doing the registration for the card
1. use UAE Government's handy dandy website and register online! then they send the card to you.
Pro: it's handy dandy.
Con: the website/server isn't capable of handling all the traffic of, you know, the entire UAE trying to register at once
2. you can go down to your local Emirates ID office (i think there's one in Al Barsha) and pay an extra fee (because of course said card costs money already) in order to do it in person.
Pro: you don't have to figure out how to get the english application on the website (look upper right corner) and you can talk to people who can answer questions that a website can't.
Con: instead of a congested site you will have a congested office and that's if you can find parking (where ever these offices are).
neither of these options are what i would call convenient. i mean you can either rip your hair out trying to load and re-load the web pages only to get nearly done and have it lock you out or you can sit in a crowded room between the convenient hours of 8 am and 2 pm with people from all over the world (some of whom do not have the same standards of personal hygiene as the rest of us) while waiting for your number to be called. lets see spend day at mall with friends knitting or at ID office desperately trying to get yet another card with your photo on it. wow that's a close one (insert sarcasm here)
like i said before there could be some pros to having an ID card. it's suppose to help prevent identity theft which has recently become an incresing problem in the country (see previous aggravation here) perhaps it would also mean that we wouldn't have to bring our passports with us every time we wanted to do something official like get a drivers license. although the whole process could end up being a bit Big Brother but then again i don't think this will be the only country to implement such a process.
good luck in your registration all my UAE friends!!!
one more thing... one of my cat's (jerry) has kinda gone crazy, well crazier than usual. she's just walking around the house meowing at walls. do you think she's eating the cat litter???
this sigh doesn't come from that fact that they are asking for everyone to get and Emirates ID (because there are Pros) but because they have given the people of this country until December 31st, 2008 to complete this process. there are two ways of doing the registration for the card
1. use UAE Government's handy dandy website and register online! then they send the card to you.
Pro: it's handy dandy.
Con: the website/server isn't capable of handling all the traffic of, you know, the entire UAE trying to register at once
2. you can go down to your local Emirates ID office (i think there's one in Al Barsha) and pay an extra fee (because of course said card costs money already) in order to do it in person.
Pro: you don't have to figure out how to get the english application on the website (look upper right corner) and you can talk to people who can answer questions that a website can't.
Con: instead of a congested site you will have a congested office and that's if you can find parking (where ever these offices are).
neither of these options are what i would call convenient. i mean you can either rip your hair out trying to load and re-load the web pages only to get nearly done and have it lock you out or you can sit in a crowded room between the convenient hours of 8 am and 2 pm with people from all over the world (some of whom do not have the same standards of personal hygiene as the rest of us) while waiting for your number to be called. lets see spend day at mall with friends knitting or at ID office desperately trying to get yet another card with your photo on it. wow that's a close one (insert sarcasm here)
like i said before there could be some pros to having an ID card. it's suppose to help prevent identity theft which has recently become an incresing problem in the country (see previous aggravation here) perhaps it would also mean that we wouldn't have to bring our passports with us every time we wanted to do something official like get a drivers license. although the whole process could end up being a bit Big Brother but then again i don't think this will be the only country to implement such a process.
good luck in your registration all my UAE friends!!!
one more thing... one of my cat's (jerry) has kinda gone crazy, well crazier than usual. she's just walking around the house meowing at walls. do you think she's eating the cat litter???
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