Read all about it right here! The crazy goings-on at Abu Dhabi Wankers' Camp ... er, sorry - Abu Dhabi Women's College!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

A Gulag 41012 Inmate Writes...

Contemporary History of ADWC, 2009-10, Semester 1 (part 1)

The ADW was a fine place to be when the now provost of Southern Utah University was at the helm. He definitely wasn't a favourite of the British types in management (that’s to say, everyone but him) and he certainly didn't hold up to the warm hall-roaming, class teaching example of Nic Gara, the previous director, but everybody has his style. At least he kept things together. More importantly, his rather long-winded bar chart presentations demonstrated how the school was producing stellar results and the staff, on the whole, felt that the long hours that they were sometimes required to put in were appreciated and worthwhile.

But then just about everything, seemingly overnight, changed. With his departure, Tubby the Kamel, who'd obviously been chomping at the bit to bring who knows the f*c* what to the ADW, projected that vile specimen from RAK into the position of acting director to do his bidding. And from that day on, things just went from bad to BAD to much, much worse!

The first hint that things were never to be the same, and the start of the big slide into one unbelievable professional insult after another, was when the staff showed up in August as required and were confronted with a billboard detailing where their new pods would be. Obviously, it had been planned with the precision of MOSSAD. The entire campus had been torn up internally over the summer, creating office space where there had been classrooms, and classrooms where there had been offices. Different departments had been dispersed to different blocks (a laughable irony as the previous administration had, with no success, ran a campaign to rename the ‘blocks’ as ‘block’ sounded "too much like a prison term"). Ha! Irony indeed, as a prison it soon became.

The Claw set up a series of ‘sally ports’, or choke points , just like in a prison, where the population can be controlled as to their movement. When the new offices were established, choke points were placed at the entrance of all the office entrances with a supervisor's office located at each of the sally ports (erm, sorry - entrances).

However, this was for the relatively fortunate staff. The luckless others were exiled to the new facility at Khalifa A, a desert-like suburb that was a beehive of construction activity as most of it was unfinished. Let's not even discuss the meetings that took place over the past years that promised that staff would be rotated between the campuses every semester. There would be no parole for those who were sentenced to the new, unfinished monstrosity. Now, instead of a cross-town drive that took 15-20 minutes, at times, to get to work, they were forced into a 45-60 minute drive (depending on where you lived) to the new excuse of a campus, through sometimes murderous traffic, being sure to get there for the 8 a.m. start. As Khalifa A was considered “just off the island” by the management goons with a sense of humour, suggestions for compensation for fuel were actually laughed at (some joke!). For me, filling my tank every three weeks for the city driving that I engaged in has now become a weekly ritual.

Practically nothing worked from the first day at the new campus. As the classrooms were considerably larger than ones at the city campus, it was decided that more students could be put into them, resulting in as many as 30 students in each class. As the Higher Diploma supervisor had never had to mark and individually revise 29 to 30 writing practices or test, he had no idea, nor did he care, how much extra work this involved. Later, he ordered a number of teachers to perform mandatory overtime in a bid to “reduce class sizes”. In fact, this bumbling idiot had no ability to recognize the fact that the unfortunates who were chosen to do the extra classes actually saw an INCREASE in student numbers and associated work.

To Be Continued…

23 comments:

Humberto Dib said...

Hi!
I just popped in to say hello, cheers from Argentina.
Humberto.

www.humbertodib.blogspot.com

Poodle Pelham said...

Nice to make your acquaintance, Humberto. Hope you liked the article. Planning on visiting HCT, are you? I'm sure you won't be disappointed!

Raja KArma said...

And while we're on the subject of history, has anybody else noticed that ADWC's EdTech homepage is a prime example of their attachment to former staff.

Take a look here -
http://www.adwc.hct.ac.ae/College/About_0/Service%20Departments_6/Educational%20Technology_6.aspx

What a laugh! The page must be about three years old, I'd say. As far as I'm able to remember, two of the people whose smiling faces adorn the page no longer work for ADWC - they left at least two years back! And of the other two faces, one was fired for no good reason about a year ago!!

Yeh, that's ADWC - real up to date and cutting edge . . . .

Raja KArma said...

Here's another anachronism.

http://www.adwc.hct.ac.ae/College/About_0/Service%20Departments_6/Quality%20and%20Institutional%20Research_4/

I feel deeply for this woman, who was cruelly fired just a couple of hours before she was due to depart for her summer leave. To leave her photo on the college website just adds salt to the wound. Callous, or what?

Anonymous said...

RK: And while we're on the subject of history, has anybody else noticed that ADWC's EdTech homepage is a prime example of their attachment to former staff.

Take a look here -
http://www.adwc.hct.ac.ae/College/About_0/Service%20Departments_6/Educational%20Technology_6.aspx


Hey, isn't one of them is supposed to be the author of this blog?

Suede Oasis said...

My God, that's very old news and already been discredited. I can assure you all - PM is NOT the author of this blog!

Anonymous said...

Wasn't thinking of PM, Suede. Nor the Irish chap.

Charles Gadda said...

Suede Oasis said...
My God, that's very old news and already been discredited. I can assure you all - PM is NOT the author of this blog!

Whoops Suede, shouldn't PP have issued the denial on his own blog? As you did, it's a fair inference to assume Suede Oasis = Poodle Pelham

Poodle Pelham said...

Now THAT's what I call a sharp mind! Well done, Mr Goon!! You'll get that promotion soon, no doubt.

Khalifa Exile said...

You can always trust an HCT Management Goon to add 2+2 and make 5.

Remember the sackings last June? Same principle was at work then!

Anonymous said...

"...warm hall-roaming, class teaching example of Nic Gara, the previous director..."????

Nic Gara was a thug.

Anonymous said...

A thug who got his just reward, (thanks to Tubby, I might add).

J. Mack said...

Some years ago I was offered an interview by HCT. Looks as though I did the right thing in lobbing the bumf into the bin.

Anonymous said...

That bumbling idiot now is the freak chair of engineering department, in addition to being the chair of maths dept.

Anonymous said...

Just which 'bumbling idiot' is that? There are quite a few of them at ADWC!

Anonymous said...

I figure that is the same superfart who used to mismanage the old HD dept.

Raja Karma said...

Surely you don't mean 'John Thomas'?!

Anonymous said...

The one and only.
The guy is ridiculously incompetent to say the least. Knows very little if nothing about maths, let alone engineering subjects. He pretends to be a fast learner and a hard worker, but that's just " little learning is a dangerous thing", which he and his corrupt superiors do not realize.

Anonymous said...

What? You expect Nathan Sentil from Kerala to tell that to Johnson Thomas of Kerala?
These people abuse power most.

Anonymous said...

I worked at ADWC for a few years, and I never figured out just how a feeble incompetent such as Johnson Thomas managed to hold on to his management position. Well, now I know, I guess - it was Indian 'wasta'!

Anonymous said...

I am sure he is tirelessly using all his (un)creativeness to find new ways to kiss the ass of the new director.
I wonder how many more lame and pretentious projects does he still have up his sleeves.

Anonymous said...

I sure hate to be on life support for such a long time, surviving 4 or 5 directors.

Anonymous said...

With the new management do you think JT will be replaced soon? Seriously anyone will be more competent than JT. He is big time showoff. All fake! I hope his hCT days are numbered.