Five things to not-love about Dubai

Dubai is nothing if not a city of contrasts. No one who lives here seems to entirely love it, or to entirely hate it, because it is so diverse. One sweeping glance can take in the most breathtaking views – the tallest of buildings, the grand emptiness of the desert, the tumbled, crumbling cacophony of old Dubai on the creek – as well as great ugliness – cranes blighting the tops of buildings, a line of electrical towers marching across scrubby strips of sand.

Socially it’s like that, too. Warm, vibrant and endlessly interesting, the teeming multitudes of Dubai are also a source of disquiet. One only has to see the speed at which whole office towers spring out of the ground to know that the labour-force here is unnervingly cheap and plentiful. Enough said.

So in the interests of balance (see previous post), here are five things I have found that I’m not really loving:

Kids without seatbelts

Apparently car accidents are on top of the cause-of-death lists for children here in Dubai. Who knew? You mean all those toddlers roaming around their cars unfettered are in some kind of danger? All those babies held in their mothers’ arms in the front seat are not actually safe? Okay, end of sarcastic rant, time to get serious. Nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing children bouncing about without seatbelts while daddy (wearing his seatbelt, possibly to stop the car making that annoying pinging sound) drives 120kmh down Sheikh Zayed Road. As I like to shout furiously to my children at such times, “Their daddy doesn’t love them” (accompanied by dramatic pointed finger).

Exhibit A

Car parking at school

You think drop-off and pick-up at your nice school in Australia (or wherever) is tedious? You should be thanking God for that slow-moving queue to get into the drop-and-go zone. Here (I mean most schools in Dubai, not just my children’s), people park everywhere, including but not restricted to: the footpath (exhibit A), the middle of the road, the traffic islands, other people’s driveways. Then they grab little Tommy or Rashid and hustle him through the seething mass of Porsche Cayennes (at least they probably all have rear sensors). It’s only a matter of time before someone gets killed (or as I like to say to my children at such times, “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye”. Oh wait, that’s running with sticks.)

General lack of green, hippy, leftist, pinko stuff

By that I mean such things as: recycling (you can take your bottles etc to a recycling centre at the shops near us, which we do, but we feel like a drop in the ocean), fresh vegetables that don’t come with a million food miles attached (oh well, it is a desert... but if they can desalinate the water, can’t they find a way to grow a few lettuces?), meat that doesn’t make me think of the Four Corners report about live animal exports from Australia (if you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean. If you haven't, use your imagination), and so on. It makes me really, really miss organic farmers’ markets, my friends who sell well-loved, well-fed and freshly butchered little lambies, and even the ubiquitous green Coles bags at home.

A ‘stratified’ society

Without getting myself into trouble here, this is a multicultural society that has a few issues. Sometimes I feel like I’m inside a fantasy novel set in an imaginary world where different nationalities automatically take different jobs: the Dolons are the miners, the Mithraki the servants, the Hitanees the rulers etc. (I just made all that up so don’t go trying to figure out what book they’re from. It was basically because I couldn’t remember any actual examples from the fantasy genre, but I’m sure they’re there. Suggestions welcome.) Here, the Filipinas are the nannies, the Filipinos the waiters, Pakistanis the gardeners and labourers, and so on. This is frankly a little weird. A lot weird. And unfair, and awful. And comes with a whole lot of connected issues that I can’t really go into here.

And finally, the neighbour’s sprinklers

This is sort of about wasted water in general, and sort of about my own beauty sleep. For an hour at bed time, just as we are hoping to fall into an exhausted sleep (every day here is exhausting), and then at five in the morning (just at that point when you are rested enough to not be able to fall back to sleep, but still not rested enough), the neighbour’s sprinklers go off. They are the kind that I have only otherwise seen on sporting ovals, the ones that go ‘chk, chk, chk, chk’ around in a circle. Only in the dead of night, they sound like a slow jackhammer. For an hour. (Have a listen on the video here. If you're having trouble seeing anything, that's because it was 5am, when it is DARK and everyone should be ASLEEP.) 

The neighbour’s yard is very empty, and very green. And I have never seen anyone use it. Not once. Maybe they just like to look at it.

 

Wherever you live, there are things that get your goat (do only Australians use that expression?). What are some of yours? Pictures and videos welcome.