Watershed

Travel Time

I will be leaving on a jet plane, at 01:45 (1:45 AM), Dubai Time, +4 GMT, on the 20th of August.

Only a 3 hour layover in Frankfurt, this time.  Leaving there at 09:50 (9:50 AM, CEST, +1 GMT)

And then arriving in Miami at 13:30 (1:30 PM, EST, -4 GMT), still on the 20th.

So, holy Mother Macree, that's another Dubai trip in the books!

Almost.  I swear I will not get involved in any labor actions, or even a big crowd, before the plane leaves.  In fact, I will just read quietly in the hotel, until I leave for the airport.

Dubai Marina at Night and Under Construction

I also took a massive landscape photo on this same night, but it's too crazy to post here.

But this picture here is my current laptop wallpaper.  Bright and shiny.

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Also, I lied about the crazy landscape.

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Grosvenor Hotel at Night

It's blue, so it becomes the focus of a lot of night shots.

Speeding trucks!  Decent focus!  Star-shaped street light!

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Sandstorm Coming at Dubai

This is what the sandstorm I mentioned in the camel posts looked like as it was coming from Sharjah and into Dubai.  Buildings just fading into tan grey nothingness.

How You Build a City Like Dubai So Fast

Buildings like this?

You ship them over from India and Pakistan in great quantities, pay 'em $104/month, put 'em up in Labour Camps, and bus them back and forth to the sites of the skyscrapers.

No idea if the buses are free or not. 

Here's 6:30 PM at the end of a middle shift.  (Most sites appear to go 24 hours a day, at least at some level of work.)

A lot of the workers get jumpsuits.  I'm pretty sure they're not deliberately supposed to look like prison uniforms, but almost any jumpsuit is going to produce that reaction, I think.

I don't know if the color of the jumpsuit actually has any meaning.  Like which developer projects they're working on.  Or which bus they can get on.  Where we work, the guys in blue jumpsuits seems most common, flocking around the Dubai Marina projects.

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If you think this sounds vaguely like a Steinbeck novel, well, that's fine.

So these are the guys who make Dubai exist.  Probably similar to the guys who built the railroads across the American West.

The Hairy Smell of Success, Pt. 2

Well into the emirate of Abu Dhabi, and I still hadn't found a camel.

So I got off Zayed Road and ventured down a side road.  Now, when you travel here you hear all sortsd of things about how you shouldn't wander away, you should be careful about taking pictures of places and people, you shouldn't act so much like a careless American.  You shouldn't randomly drive down unmarked side roads that are off the main roads, especially without a map.  You could end up wandering on the side of the highway, trapped and thirsty, destined for an unmarked fate and a dusty grave.

For the most part, I have paid very close attention to this advice and then utterly ignored it.

So I drove up and down a road that featured nothing but sand on my left.  Sand, and fences, and vague shacks in the distance. 

And camel crossing signs, of course, which you have already seen. 

It was bleak down this road.  I snapped some shots, stopped on the side of the road and stared into the distance, but saw few signs of human life.  Or unfortunately, camel life.

It was so bright and hot down this road that even signs of Sheikh Zayed were faded by the power of the sun.  Feel free to quote Ozymandias yourself here.

By the way, I am carefully not showing the tree farm that was on the right side of the road the whole way.  It would totally blow this sere vibe I'm trying to produce.  Endless desert, people!  Sand and tarmac and sweat on your brow!  Nothing else, except for tree farms and unmanned gates and clearly marked signs.

Anyway, the point is I couldn't find a camel.  And I had to bring the car back to the hotel, for my co-worker who was going to drive into City Center for some Dim Sum.  I know it's not Lawrence assaulting Aqaba, but commentators claim it's a debased age we live in.

I turned the POS around and went back to the modern superhighway of named for the man on the faded sign above.  I cran ked the radio, and sipped water, and wondered why lots of other folks on this trip have seen camels, but not me.  Was it some kind of camel curse?  A Dromedary Doom?  My shoulders twitched, feeling the rising hump.  The rounded hairy hump of failure.

And then, inn the distance, nothing at all like an oasis, I saw some hairy creatures.  I merged across three lanes of traffic and onto the side of the road like an Illinois State Tropper chasing someone down on the Dan Ryan.

I got out of the car.  And started taking pictures of camels.  I had to walk back at them, and the older (mother?) camel kept nudging the little one further and further away fomr me.  But a cheap zoom lens and some persistence got these tan, tan photos below.

So that's how I got pictures of camels.  As I headed back to the hotel around 9:15, a live Pearl Jam cover of "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" came on the radio.  I cranked it up over 140KPH, turned up the radio to drown out the sound of the chimes telling me I was speeding, and headed back to the Marriott.

Here's what you really need to know, though:  if I had just gone out on Zayed Road, turned around at the first major exit, and headed back on the Road, I would have had camel pictures in about 15 minutes from the point I left my hotel room.

Ah, adventure!

The Hairy Smell of Success, Pt. 1

Those of you who read Watershed during my first trip to Dubai know that, while I took more pictures last time, I failed in one major respect:  no pictures of camels.  "Aren't there camels everywhere?  It's the desert, right?"  Well, there are camels around, but they're not everywhere.

I got a specific request yesterday for a picture of a camel.  So this morning, bright and dusty, I set off in the Mitsubishi POS toward Abu Dhabi, where the building fade away, and the sand closes in.

In search of camels.

I started out around 7AM, with a bottle of water, and a tuna sandwich.  Oh, and a cappucino.  I got the POS up on the road, weaved through a few traffic circles full of semis and other obstacles like Peugots and other POSs, and got going down the industrial highway. 

(I have realized the Mitsubishi POS is one of the most common cheap cars here in Dubai.  It's the rental fleet car, the starter car, the one you give to your 16 year old kid when they are just learning and you don't want them too fast or too proud.  (Personally, my first car was a '79 Subaru sedan, which we named the 69er. It was junky, but at least unique, and a stick.   The POS is just a box with an engine and a pedal.)  We have had trouble finding the POS in parking lots, because there are about eight in the lot near the Reuters building.  I keep trying to open up cars that aren't mine, even when I parked the POS last, and should theoretically know where it is.  The POS is JUST THAT GENERIC.  It makes the old Chevy Cavalier look as distinctive as a Hummer.)

Back in April, I had gone southwest on Sheikh Zayed Road on a camel search, and had only seen vague camel-like specks on the other side of the highway.  Because camels would surely be smart enough to stay away from the side of a major, dangerous highyway, full of overconfident speeders, changing lanes like Andretti wanna-bes.  Like me.

However, 15 minutes of the industrial highway showed me nothing even vaguely camel-like.  Worse, I didn't actually know where this highway went.  My Dubai maps cut off around Jebel Ali, and were no help.  So I scurried back to Zayed Road, which I at least knew how to navigate.  Immediately, I stopped at a rest stop to goggle at free global trade in action.

Note not just the Coke truck, but also the combined McDonalds/Subway drive through.

Back on Zayed, I sped south and west, staring at the sides of the road for a humped-back silhouette.  No luck.  I crossed into the Emirate of Abu Dhabi doing 145KPH, flying on caffeine and tuna. 

There were heavy sandstorms yesterday, throughout the area, and you could still see residue of it in the distance toweard the city of Abu Dhabi.  But here, near the border of the emirates, it was still.  And not as hot as the past few days.  Only supposed to get to 44 C this day (111 in Fahrenheit).  Considering the last few days have been more like 48 C (118 F) this was a welcome relief.  Not too humid, either.  The 48 C has been combined with a rolling humidity that has been like a slap with a moist towel every time you walk outside.

Still no camels.

(End Part 1)

Not me!

I want to make it entirely clear:  this is not me.

Drunk and Disorderly

Published on: Wednesday, 16th August, 2006

An American man has been found guilty of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest after turning up drunk at the American Consulate and trying to gain entry to the building late at night. The 35-year-old visitor from Florida, will spend one month in jail for the charges and was fined dhs2000 for drinking alcohol.

Fantasyland

I'm pretty sure that there is a form of insanity where people feel the whole world is just a stage show put on for their benefit.  That if they spin around fast enough, they'll catch the stagehands moving sets around, or extras acting out of character.

Dubai, because of all the aspects of Dubai like constant construction and development and an expanding society, feels like that on a low level of hum all the time.  And then sometimes, you notice things that feel like the director playing a little joke on you.  I just went and got a pack of gum from a newsstand outside. 

In the elevator on the way down, there was a guy who was around 4 foot, 9.  Noticeably under 5 foot, anyway.  I stared down at the top of his scalp.

On the way up, a guy got on the elevator who was 6'7".  (I asked.)

Both dressed in blue suits, with dark ties, doing business on a cell phone.

That's just odd.

Photographic Evidence

I'm very aware that I'm taking fewer pictures than last time.  The mian reason is because I'm covering the same territory.  Same hotel, same office, same basic run of restaurants, same basic daily schedule.  So there's nothing much new that is compelling me.  I make take some time over the next few days and 1) seek out a live camel to take portraits (apparantly, there is one working on a construction site near the Hilton, where some of the team is staying); 2) More cranes.