A close shave?

Here I am, back in the ether after a slightly longer hiatus than I expected over Christmas. No, it wasn't due to the fact that I was hanging tinsel on my gardenia shrub and wrapping the base of the Christmas palm tree in cheap garland --

I just couldn't log on to my blogger.com account.

Naturally, the first thing that ran through my mind was that Etisalat had found me. And not just Etisalat, but whatever secret organisation (Ministry of Truth, perhaps?) controls the ether. Just think -- that was before I posted the lollipop story.

Yes, I'll confess, after a week or so of hanging browsers, I was getting a little worried. But instead of packing my bags, I re-downloaded the latest version of Tor, configured Mozilla to use the proxy, and shazam! I was back online.

While I was offline, I drafted a little letter to the nice folks at Etisalat:

Dear Etisalat geniuses,

While I commend you on your efforts to limit internet access for the purposes of protecting the innocent citizens of the UAE (not to mention your own bank balance), I think you could try just a little harder. You see, even though you have succeeded in blocking Skype, anything including the Story of O, pictures of Socrates with young Meno, and a number of educational geographic sites (such as the ones that might inform my students that in the southern hemisphere January and December are summer months), you have more work to do. None of these blocks really amounts to anything until and unless you block access to all anonymising proxy servers. So why haven't you done that?

One possibility is that you aren't quite sure what an anonymising proxy server is. Easily understood, when one considers the probability of your average employee knowing what the words 'anonymising' and 'proxy' mean. Let's say it's something like 1/100 for each word, making the probability of knowing BOTH words far less (no, NOT 2/100). My recommendation is that you furnish each of your employees with a dictionary. While they're climbing that steep learning curve, rest happy knowing that every expat in Abu Dhabi is successfully Skyping their loved ones back home.

Except me. You still haven't hooked up my internet.

Kind regards,

Another Expat

Internet on the go

And even if you aren't on the go, it's pretty much the only way to obtain internet access RIGHT now.

You see, we've been sitting in a virtual queue over at the Etisalat headquarters for nearly three weeks now, with nary a word as to when we might expect broadband installation at home.  The nice surprise was that we were able to piggyback off of one of our neighbours (yes, people really do have unprotected wireless networks...still).  That lasted about a week.

Then nothing.

So being the can-do people that we are, we sprinted over to the Etisalat kiosk at Madinat Zayed Shopping Centre a few evenings ago and picked up a USB 2.0 high speed modem, model number MF633.  Don't bother looking for it on the Etisalat site, because it doesn't appear to be there.

The device, which I like to call "the dingleberry," is - wonder of wonders - compatible with both Windows and Mac, and comes with its own little somewhat-intuitive-but-not-really software.  I think it costs about 499 Dhs, but I'm not sure because we can't find the receipt in the sea of confusion that has become our lives over the past few days.

You're probably wondering if there are other costs involved.  Well, of course there are.  Like the SIM card (known as "Wasel" in EtisalatSpeak -- kinda funny when you consider we're in the land of non-drinkers).  Wasel probably means something like maybeit'llworkandmaybeitwon'tbutweguaranteeyou'llhaveanimpossibletimefiguringitout.  But I digress.

The SIM card itself costs about 175 Dhs, and then you have to load it up with money.  Hint:  load it with 460 Dhs and be sure to dial the 125 number from it (you'll have to put it in another mobile phone for this to work) and subscribe to the monthly plan of 10 gig.  If you don't do this, you'll be on the default pay-as-you-go plan, which effectively means your internet access will cost you one million dollars per byte.

The broadband service packages are (sort of) described here.

I have to say that after 72 hours of kvetching and worrying, the dingleberry works pretty well (rather in the same way that a gimp turtle does well in the 500-metre dash).  I've run some speed tests (see www.speedtest.net) and -- are you sitting down? --

I get download speeds of 1.88 Mbps (that's megabits per second).

Holy slow as molasses in January, Batman!  Well, the fact is that 1.88 is a lot better than the .88 I was getting yesterday.

The biggest coup of the day, however, was figuring out how to get internet access to both of our laptops simultaneously.  Here's what I did (ok, I'm going to omit the part about my running an applescript without really knowing what I was doing and thereby screwing up my plist files so that nothing network or internet-related worked):

1.  Trashed my network-related plist files and rebooted (this rebuilt the system files).

2.  Got out the Apple Airport Extreme wireless router that I brought along in my carry-on baggage.

3.  Set up internet sharing on my laptop, using a password-protected local address for other computers using Airport.

4.  Turned on Airport on my husband's laptop and selected my local host.

5.  Entered the password.

I'd like to say this was pure genius, but it's much more accurate to say it was the result of brute force.

Getting (E)mail in the desert

I don't really care much about snail mail capabilities.  No one ever sends me mail anyway, except for my grandparents, and we'll work something out just for them.

But take away my email for a day and the pit bull will emerge.

See, I, probably more than most people, have a very close relationship with my computer.  I use it for everything:  reading the news, checking the time, converting currency, researching whatever, running stats, shopping, sending cards, keeping my diary, looking up recipes (particularly handy when your cookbooks are in the middle of the ocean), and of course, email.  I need my computer, and it needs me.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that high up on the list of priorities is establishing an internet connection at our new villa (note I did not say "wreck" because, as of this past weekend, the villa is ready).

There are a few choices of ISPs in Abu Dhabi, and they all rhyme with "Etisalat."  Hurrah for state monopolies.  So off I go to dig around the Etisalat site.

Like most commercial sites, and certainly like most commercial sites in the UAE, the Etisalat webpage is about as navigable as the Bermuda Triangle (no doubt my clever master mariner friend will point out to me that the Bermuda Triangle is super-navigable, but it sounded good anyway).  So I'm going to point to a few key pages for the benefit of those who have even less patience than I.

All-in-One 3-pack:  Landline, TV, and Internet

Dhs 422 for the Gold package (download speed of 2 Mbps -- that's b for bits, not B for Bytes)

Dhs 522 for the Platinum package (download speed of 4 Mbps)

Dhs 280 for installation of either

All-in-One 2-pack:  Landline and Internet

Dhs 363 for the Gold package

Dhs 464 for the Platinum package

Dhs 180 for installation of either

Al Shamil:  Broadband Internet only

Dhs 449 (4 Mbps)

Dhs 349 (2 Mbps)

Dhs 249 (1 Mbps)

Dhs 200 for installation of any

Dhs 180 for wired modem

Holy expensive Internet, Batman!

That's USD 122.00 or GBP 74.00 per month for a lousy 4 Megabits per second connection speed.  Stateside a few years ago, we were paying about $30 a month for DSL and here in the UK we've got a brilliant international phone plan/broadband (8 Mbps, thank you very much) package for 30 quid.  I guess Etisalat is making up for the fact that all those Skype users are still getting away with making free VoIP calls to their friends and loved ones back home.

As of now, I don't know which we'll be using.  One of us hasn't watched telly since Seinfeld was still running, the other probably goes back even farther.  We've got mobile phones (I hate the things, but my husband makes me carry one around for emergencies).  So we don't really need the bundled package, but since the 2 Mbps All-in-One 3-pack costs less than the 4 Mbps Internet-only option, maybe I'll just start watching Turner Classic Movies on a regular basis.

Skype

Don't take my word for it, go to the UAE and point your browser to www.skype.com.

You won't get through.

Then go browse some expat forums and read (for your entertainment) the multitude of panicky posts asking what to do about calling abroad cheaply and how to crack the Skype problem.

Anyone who's done a bit of research on VoIP, specifically Skype, in the UAE knows that the site is blocked by the Powers That Be.  Ok, so the telephone monopoly is protecting its interests.  Fine.  Whatever.  Anyone with half a brain (well, most people with half a brain) can get around this.

The easiest thing to do is to download Skype before you travel.  See, it's not the application that's blocked, it's the website from which you download it.

Of course, there are those who don't research things ad nauseum before they move halfway across the world, and even those who do might end up having to re-download the app once they're already in the UAE.  We might have to make the leap up to a minimum 3/4 brain requirement to find a solution to this problem, but it can be done.

First of all, read about proxy servers, paying close attention to "anonymising proxies."  Then find a free one and configure your browser to use it (one might think that proxy server information is inaccessible once in the UAE, but one would be wrong - the Powers that Be aren't that clever).  I'm particularly fond of Tor (The Onion Router) and find that it works wherever and whenever I need it to.  Once that's all done, open the browser using the proxy and head over to the Skype site.

Trust me, it works.