2 Steps Forward and 1.99 Steps Backwards.

Onwards and Upwards. Surely it's just a Joke!
My Social Media mentor, Guru Guy, told me my posts are too long, or maybe he was politely saying that I'm too long winded with my self indulgent wallowing? So time to try to condense, and no better moment than over a topic about which I could potentially rant on over for days. Hold it there, as before I get stuck in, time for a shower, which entails a brief plunge in the pool followed by the outside shower around the corner of the pool house. In fact the only shower, and I tend to have three a day, I've had indoors, over the last ten weeks, was my first day here, before I'd found the out doors number. But STOP, this is exactly the type of digression kanGuru was referring too. So on to the nuts and bolts.

The honorable institution in reality

In order to get my visa to stay here in Paradise I need a sum of money in my local bank account, but all my dosh is in my Emirates' bank account. It's mine, and one would imagine I should be able to access it, after a few formalities, with relative ease. But no way Jose, not here, not with them and not without one hell of a battle. The first telegraphic transfer I couriered to the bank was refused as there was a letter crossed out without my initials being present. Ten days gone and, yes, that was my fault. The second was accepted and the stamped copy returned to me, only for them to then say a week later, that the transfer form had meanwhile changed and mine, the old one, was invalid. The third was submitted only for the honorable institution  to then announce that I, in person, must spend six hundred quid to fly back to Dubai to present the application in person! So thats four weeks passed and we're back at step 1. Next angle is setting up Internet Banking which sounds fairly straight forward. Yer right, who am I kidding. Myself I suppose? The major sticking point was that if and when it's set up you are notified by email and given a temporary password by SMS. Ten days go by before couriered change of email address is accepted. And then we have the three week conundrum of how I'm going to receive my password as my Emirate's phone number has expired and the bank won't call to any number that isn't a local number. After speaking to innumerable help line officers, where the language barrier proved the major stumbling block despite their insistant 'Yes Yesses' that they understood, I had got nowhere.

And here as I see it!

The erudite Ashley finally answered one of my many calls and laboriously we went through it for about forty five minutes and all angles seemed to be covered as he dictated exactly what I should write in my next couriered letter. Then I was to ring him the following week to follow up, by which time he'd be on night shift. I phoned and whoever it was said "No, Ashley's on days". I phoned the next morning and was told "No, Ashley's sick". And so then Osama became my man and he told me that whatever Ashley had said I still needed an Emirates telephone number. As it was Ashley had reckoned we could avoid this and I could get the password by email. Days drag on, daily phone calls to Osama are played out, Stephen's roaming number is submitted by yet another courier and finally I get an email stating 'follow these steps and put in the temporary password which has been SMS'd. But they never SMS'd!!! Meanwhile the truth regarding Ashley had come out. He wasn't on days, not even nights and he hadn't even been ill, he'd fuckin resigned. Had I been the final straw to break Ashley's back or even help him see the light and move on to some more sane institution? But then after ten weeks, and after yet another 'Fill this out with SMS'd password' which was never sent to Stephen, abracadabra I get both letter and password by separate emails. Tentatively I mold the two together and we're there. Well I never. So now all I want to do is extract all my dinaro out of there and to somewhere hopefully more user friendly. But the dragon reared it's head again today when I went to transfer funds, as when I logged in the beneficiary of the transfer I was told that for this process to take place I must complete the details with, wait for it... An authorization code that'll be SMS'd to me. Aaaargh, where's my gun. No, Ireckon I can do it, but it just needs fine timing between Steven checking his phone and me filling out the transfer. Must be positive.