It's a Trap! A customer service story.

Municipal services here are a monopoly.  The Abu Dhabi Water & Electricity Company's (ADWEC) motto is "Single Buyer and Seller of Water and Electricity."  I don't even know why they have a website with information on it; it should just be a site full of cat photos.  That would be more useful.

Official Spokesperson for your electric company

Telephone, internet, and cable TV services all come from etisalat.

The lower case 'e' is not a typo

Many people here complain about how slow and bad their service is, but I really have no complaints.  My telephone works alright (international calls are sometimes static-y, but that's par for the course), my new eLife internet connection is 7 times faster than it was before, and I have Turner Classic Movies to watch all day long. 

OK, I lied, I have a complaint:  I think they're messing with your mind.

I've had to call etisalat a total of three times, twice because of internet problems and  once (today), because my cable was giving me an error message.  Now that I have TCM back, it's tragic when I don't have it on all day long so Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, and Bette Davis can keep me company all day.  

I only keep the classiest of company

I call and they ask for a piece of identifying information that I will never remember: my home telephone number.  I look it up, pass it on, and they say "How can I help you, Mrs. Stanley." The company owns the apartment so all the bills are under the name Stanley Consultants, so to them, I'm Mrs. Stanley.

I don't really care who you are, I just want you off the phone

Me:  My eLife television is showing an error message.
etisalat:  Have you turned the box off and back on?
Me:  Yes, several times.
etisalat:  Tell me which lights are on your eLife box.
Me:  Blah blah, all the normal ones <paraphrase
etisalat:  Please, ma'am, turn the box off and then on again.
Me to myself: I DID THAT 20 TIMES ALREADY!!!
Me:  OK
<turn box off and then on again thinking "This isn't going to work."  It works.>
Me:  It's working.
etisalat: Anything else I can help you with today ma'am?
Me: No. 
<Slam down phone>

Turns out, you shouldn't slam down a cell phone

This conversation is pretty typical of the ones I've always had, and I have a theory about why it works after you call.   See, I think while the service rep is asking you to  do something stupid (tell me which lights are on, turn it off and on again), they are actually doing something on their end that they don't tell you about.  It's a plot to get more satisfactory calls or something.  I don't know, but I find it highly suspicious that when I turn it on and off nothing happens, but when I do while I'm on the line with customer service it works.  It makes me look bad.

So that's my complaint/conspiracy theory regarding customer service at etisalat.  For what it's worth.

The best thing since...

Today's topic is something that's near and dear the American heart.  You may not realize it, because you've never been without it, but Wonderbread is one of the most amazing foods money can buy.  It's cheap, soft, delicious, and has a variety of uses. Bread here is a joke.

Nice try, Lulu's, but I'm not laughing

It stays soft about 4 hours after you open it, gets moldy in two or three days, and always always the crust falls off.  The crust falling off would be fine if I were a 5-year-old, but I'm not, I'm an adult, and I like crust. 

This is Arabic bread:

5 pieces, 1 dirham

On the plus side, it's ultra-cheap.  This cost me a quarter (which is why I bought some just so I could take a photo of it for this blog post) and will last at least a week.  I'll probably cut it in half and fill it like a pita pocket full of bad stuff and toast it.  Cheese, bacon, and beef is my current favorite combination;  probably not what the Bedouins do with it. 

Bacon Cheeseburger Pitas aren't really their thing

But now, just recently, a miracle.  A new bread, not the $6-a-loaf imported from the UK so it's not really fresh anyway, but a local bread has appeared in the store.

Please leave your suggestions for what the brand name might be in the comments

It's Wonderbread!!  I can't tell you how excited I was to eat this bread after a year without the soft, white goodness of Wonderbread.  Thank goodness it comes with instructions on how to use it.

Really?

So for the last week I've eaten sandwiches everyday, and feel good about sending them to work with Dan as lunch.  It lets me be too lazy to cook again sometimes.  Huzzah, for Arabic Wonderbread!

Pepper turkey, bacon, garlic gouda, butter lettuce, and mustard

I do hippy stuff

Dan thinks I'm going to go totally crunchy when we get back to the  States.  I talk about having chickens and a garden and a compost heap.  Maybe that's just a reaction to the fact that you can't even recycle here.  There are bins marked "Recycling" in some of the more upscale neighborhoods and on the Corniche (Boardwalk), but they all get dumped into the same trucks, so maybe I'm just reacting to the total lack of environmentalism here.  Or maybe I'm just crazy.  Maybe both.

I don't own a vase, but I do own several empty liquor bottles

I keep the containers from the deli or food items that I could use again.

Just like any good 80-year-old

This is what I keep my Kosher Salt in:

Yes, it's an empty face cream container.  I washed it.

I rinse my hair with a lemon juice solution to prevent scalp itch, I put apple cider vinegar in my bath as an antibacterial.  It prevents yeast and athlete's foot.  Scented fabric softener makes me itch, so I use white vinegar instead.

Some people make their own laundry soap too.  I'm not that crazy yet.

I wash my face with oil.  Seriously.  Instead of any expensive products, I just use a mixture of almond and castor oils.  I haven't put anything else on my face (except sunscreen) since I started in October.  The results have been so amazing even Dan does it now.

It works AND it's cheap.  What's not to love?

This is a collection of used batteries and dead light bulbs awaiting a place I can take them to be recycled.

Someday you'll be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way, my pretties.  Be patient.

TMI WARNING: Feminine stuff ahead

I am trying out the Diva Cup.  It's a reusable, silicone menstrual cup that can last up to 5 years if cared for properly.  If it works, it'll keep all the used feminine products I currently use out of landfills.

Don't think about it too hard, man reading this.  Just don't.

So, as a right and proper woman who does crazy things, my next plan is to protest this sign

That was recently put up at my local mall.  If I want to wear a tank top, I'm going to, and we'll see if security will actually throw me out.  Fight the Power!

The shoulders that brought down the world. 

This week in food

I do a lot of cooking and baking (and thus a lot of dishes).  This is chronicle of everything that I made for a week, starting on Thursday, January 26th.  Thursday was probably a bad day to start, because I cook less on the weekends so I can spend more time with Dan, but c'est la vie.

Thursday:
Butterscotch Rum Cake

The icing didn't turn out exactly as planned

This is something I made last week and sent most of it to work with Dan.  He said it was a hit with the people who ate it (some people abstained because they don't drink.  Yeah, I think it's weird too.)  Since it was so good, and I felt ripped off because I shared so much, I made another one just for me and Dan.  But there was a problem: no butterscotch chips.  Well, if there's a will, there's someone on the internet doing it the hard way, so I made my own butterscotch sauce.  I didn't include it on the list, because I made it Wednesday.  Anyway, it's delicious and at the time I am writing this, the entire cake has been eaten and I'm trying to think of something spectacular to do with the remaining butterscotch.  Butterscotch Snickerdoodles perhaps.

Rotel Mac

Not Pictured: Health Food

Dan and I like Hamburger Helper.  Noodles, meat, usually cheese, what's not to like?  Well, it's not something you can get here, and my dad has always made his own HH so this is my version.  It's one pound each noodles, ground beef, and velveeta cheese, and two cans of Rotel (always available here which I think is weird).  It's a ton of food and now I won't have to cook anything for dinner until at least Sunday.

Friday I rested.  There was cake, there was mac, there were Bugles.  No need to cook at all, although the desire for Sweet Potato Fries was there, I ignored it in favor of finishing my eLibrary book before it expired.

Saturday:
I needed something to do and that something was Soft Pretzel Bites.

Yes, this is what I bring Dan to snack on on the weekends

 

 

They are super easy to make, and just as delicious as they sound.  The dip is Garlic Cheddar Ranch (I put that stuff in the microwave and melted it together.  Magic!)

I also made iced tea. 

No, I don't remove labels before I use things.  Deal with it.

I know it's not really cooking, but it's something I do every other day or so.  I make two kinds: a flavored black tea and a flavored green tea. Pictured are Lipton Forest Fruits Black Tea and Bigelow's Pomegranate Green Tea.

Sunday:
Sunday is the first day of the work week here.  I didn't feel too well and stayed in bed until noon instead of going to get my fingerprints taken for my Emirates ID (a pointless exercise in bureaucracy I will probably write about when it's over).  I didn't actually feel like cooking at all, but sometimes I just can't help it, not when the butter is already soft and someone has asked about it so....

Dark Chocolate Cherry Cookies

Sorry, Wing.  I ate them all.

Using the same sugar cookie base I've had success with before, I added a cut up 60% Cocoa chocolate bar and dried cherries.  I planned on sharing with Dan's coworkers, but Dan was home sick and by the time he would have taken them, I'd eaten most of them.  Secondary project: Diabeetus

Crispy Oven Sweet Potato Fries

According to Congress, that's two vegetables right thar

I thought I ought to eat something other than cookie dough, so I made these.  Although they are white-fleshed, these are local sweet potatoes.  They crisp up much nicer than the orange fleshed ones that cost so much more.  I did a lot of experimenting to get them just right, and only the white ones come out the way I prefer.  Seasoned with garlic, salt, and pepper, and great with ketchup.

Monday & Tuesday:
OK, so this turned out to be a bad week to document my cooking.  Dan has some kind of bug and I'm on a new headache med that makes me want to do nothing but eat sweets and watch TV with my eyes closed.  So the only thing I made was this:

Turkey Bacon Club on Tomato Ciabatta

It's Butterball Turkey.  Seriously.

One on Monday, one on Tuesday.  Big enough to share.  I think cooking bacon in the microwave has weakened my Ikea plates because I've broken all but two of them and I only dropped one.  The others were freak accidents.

Wednesday:
Last day of the documentary, and I wanted to finish strong, so I kicked it up a notch.

Strawberry Banana Bread

As you can see, I've acquired a bigger dish, to avoid the icing waterfall effect

I needed to make banana bread, because I keep buying bananas and they go bad crazy fast here.  I also had some strawberries.  I had planned on chopping them up and freezing them for the future, but thought, what the heck, and added them to this recipe.  I didn't add much strawberry flavor, but the bread is very moist.

In case you were wondering, I don't own a loaf pan, so two loaf recipes get made in this pan.

Crispy Honey Mustard Chicken, Homemade Stovetop Stuffing, and Steamed Broccoli and Carrots

It's almost possibly good for you!

This is the kind of meal I put out when I'm really trying.  I started making my own Stovetop when Lulu's stopped carrying it.  I LOVE Stovetop Stuffing.  It's something I can eat anytime, no matter how I feel.  And now it's homemade and not from a box.

The veggies are there because you have to have a vegetable or it's not a real meal.  I like broccoli, Dan likes carrots, so this is the compromise.

Minty Fudge Cookies

This pyramid of fudginess predicts 2012 is the end of days (for Minty Fudge Cookie Pyramid).

I'm really kind of showing off today because it's the last day, so I baked cookies after dinner, even though I usually doze on the couch while pretending to watch Dan play video games (after we've watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, of course).  These are soft, almost cakey, and Dan say's they are better than Girl Scout Thin Mints. Take that little girls!

And that's all she wrote.  A whole week's worth of cooking.  Not as impressive as I hoped, there's usually more actual food in there, although I do do that much baking on a regular basis. It's Wednesday night, and there's still Rotel Mac and plenty of leftovers from tonight. Those will keep us a bit.

Fin