Sunday, November 20, 2005

Secret Dubai Diary

That's the name of the blog, Secret Dubai Dairy. Not very secret on the internet, but the name tells something of how cautious one sometimes needs to be. The writing is delicious. I have an image of a place awash with money where citizens flush with the luxuries of oil wealth are the top crust of a society teeming with foriegners who are the nuts and bolts of everyday living.

For the past car-less week, due to a severe let-down by Lease-A-Lambo, a peasant-like existence has taken place of trekking daily through the jungles around Cell Block G to forage food and water from Ibn Battuta.

A colleague, horrified by this
Kiplingesque existence, passed on the name of an insider at CheapiCar. Just days after faxing several hundred documents and identity cards over to them, a gleaming Silver Shadow was delivered to the gulag.

Freedom to roam again at last! To ride the wild roads of Sheikh Zayed once more, racing past sluggish white Nissan Sunnies as sheikhmobiles fly up the hard shoulder in a cloud of dust. Being able to snooze peacefully in the late afternoon at the wheel of the Shadow, as it rests in hour-long stationary gridlock.

Driving past the great sights of Dubai: the post-apocalyptic concrete monoliths of Jumeirah Beach Residence with their glittering, clanking cranes; the beautifully landscaped Beach Road with its lovely sandy trenches, lane closures, myriad plastic cones and glorious netting barriers lining each side; the white-trash-christmas flashing neon artificial ski slope at Emirates Mall.

Oh, the joys of driving in Dubai.

Very poetic and descriptive. I imagine that indicates at least a small dose of Western education. The blogroll is another feeding place I have not yet tasted.
Thanks secret blog from arabia for the link.

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