written in Al-Ain, January 2008
Outside it was hot enough to fry milk so I went out and fried a
quart.
My god, how long did it take
you to turn the calendar this month?
Eleven o’clock and 13 feet in
front of me hanging on a filing cabinent there is a calendar—December
2005. who stopped keeping track?
The relatively new road to Dubai,
the big arch above Jimi and which intersects at the welcome to al-ain
roundabout, shaves about 10 minutes of drive time, 9 minutes if you have a
hummer 2 and you don’t see the new rural roundabouts.
It is hard to believe getting and
giving directions still takes aerial logic and a four dimensional sense
here. How many of us without the aid of
a compass or GPS can go through a roundabout and know which way is East?
I followed directions to a home not one kilometer away and I wound up in
a municipality parking lot.
Quiz: What do you find in Al-Ain’s
west end?
There’s this astronomer here you can
listen to at the link below who describes four different kinds of symmetry in
the two dimensional scene and not one of them explains the symmetry of driving
here. A wondrous mystery one might say,
a reason for the chaos another will utter, it’s all part of the big experiment
says the dude in the black Landcrusier with black windows.
Ok dude. The dude abides.
Looking at the layout of the city
one guesses geometry wasn’t asked to contribute an opinion. What good is math except predicting how long
will it take to turn around if you go the wrong way?
Not wishing to think badly of the
roads, it is this opinion overall they are the best kept roads in the
world. And sometimes it’s like a Monaco
speedway, but who encourages that, it must be the spacious tarmac, the checker
flagged curbs, stretches of road without roundabouts for miles!
Imagine a cool winter morning in Al-Ain, the streets are
most to partly empty and with the windows down your best driving music turned
on high taking the roundabout curves and long stretches effortlessly , it’s a
pleasure to be a part of the mechanism.
As for driving in Dubai. Friday and Saturday mornings are the best
time to enter the big Schwarma, if you didn’t know that already. Ok, a lot isn’t open, but who cares, there’s
minimal traffic go explore. The Business
Bay bridge and the airport tunnel are worth checking out at least once and the
new ghost towns of the new Dubai are eerie.
Does anyone know when the revised
edition of on the road in the UAE will be released? My copy is already obsolete.
For sale ads are a great service to
the community reaching intended buyers as far as Sweihan but let’s talk about
this stool for sale.
I’d guess most didn’t click on the
link to see this barstool which most likely didn’t have a bar to go with it
hence it is just a stool and will be referred to as such from now on. But what about this seller’s stool? The asking price was Dh25. The lone stool didn’t have any other stools
to accompany it? And I see from the masking tape junior may have used it to
reach for one more tin of tahini. Surely
you’d have to take Dh10 off there.
But for the kind individual who was
selling the stool and took the time and effort to take a photo of it to
advertise it…I hope you didn’t have to push too hard to sell your stool.
I signed up for three months of
e-vision television yesterday and two very distressful viewings prompted me to
cancel the service; the inscribing of
Mighty Ducks on Lord Stanley’s Cup and a two foot tall woman nine months
pregnant. Wake me up when the NFL
starts please.
Best music to look for this
summer: Bill Frisell, Widespread
Panic, The June 19 release of The White
Stripes new kick butt CD Icky Thump.
Suggestions to add?
Best reading of the past year: William Vollmann’s Poor People, William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain: A
Journey into the Shadow of Byzantium, and Ma Jian’s Stick out your Tongue. And yours?
Best movies in the theaters this
year: The Painted Veil and The Namesake
Best shwarma, still, in the
country: I keep forgetting the name but
it is located at the Bani Yas Square in Dubai.
The only charcoal grilled roadkill around.
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