To have and have-not

I’ve avoided posting for the last week or so because I have been in a bit of a negative funk. So, let me just dump all that cr*p now, almost as if I am shoving it in a plastic bin bag for depositing down the garbage chute at the apartment tower block and listening for the ‘thunk’ at the bottom:

• I had to drop PD off on the way to work today – not very simple, it would seem, as I got hopelessly lost trying to get back on the road to my office and ended up doing a grand tour of some of Dubai’s noteworthy industrial estates, airport back roads and spaghetti junctions. It took me almost two hours to get to the office, and I’m not ashamed to say that on two occasions fellow motorists witnessed me weeping and pounding my fists on the steering wheel
• Further to being two hours tardy, there was then no parking in the sandpit so I had to park a 20 minute walk away
• Last night I was treated to dinner at the Cultural Village at the Souk Madinat Jumeriah, courtesy of a journalist friend of mine out here on a press trip and his PR. Very lovely, but they were an hour late (not their fault – it was due to the fact that they could of course not get a cab). So I sat there like a lemon/spare wheel/ligger/loser (delete as appropriate) sipping juice and wondering WHY I haven’t been to the gym in four days
• We’re still in the apartment and the cat is behaving badly because she is bored – surely she is mirroring my state of mind like some sort of furry diviner
• It takes me, on average, 20 minutes to travel 2 kilometres in the morning, simply to get out of the Greens and onto the Sheikh Zayed Road
• And….breathe. Right, that over I’m going to convey some observations on the whole have and have-not dichotomy in this crazy town.

I’ve mentioned before how the social divide in Dubai is that much more marked than in other places in the world. Or at least, those places I have visited and lived. Wealth is worn like a badge here, while those who are so underprivileged can only stare in that way that they do from those rickety old buses with the windows open and rags fluttering from the undercarriage.

Interestingly, while this divide is obvious in a traffic jam – said buses idling behind shiny white European luxury 4WDs and top drawer convertibles, the traffic jams here are a great leveller. I mean, we all have to wait at the lights to get through – there’s no preferential treatment in this scenario. Yes, I can complain my little western heart out about sitting in traffic for ages and yet I have the aircon blasting in my car, my iPod Nano plugged into the stereo and a 2 litre engine to whizz me back to life in the fast lane as soon as the traffic light goes green.

In my Rent Rant of the other week, I was complaining about the cost of accommodation (that is, nice digs with amenities such as a gym and pool) – I’m on a fairly good wicket here and so is PD (all relative of course – don’t get me wrong, we’re not rolling in it by any stretch of the imag.) and we can afford to look for and want this sort of lifestyle. If I were earning less – and there are a many many people here who are, I couldn’t demand those sort of things from where I choose to live, I would be forced to live in the likes of Sharjah and my morning commute would actually be more like 3 hours every day, rather than 45 minutes.

In some ways, I wonder if living in the affluent enclave of the Greens has made me immune to how lucky we really are – aside from the daily traffic jam, when else do I get to see how other people live? In that sense, it’s so much easier to complain about everything because you are not faced with other people’s reality every day.

Yeah well – sod it – I am complaining. This is harder than I thought it would be and I can only relate my own reality. Pffft!

Flickster. x

P.S. PD has a lead on an apartment close to the Burj Dubai which sounds to good to be true and all that. You never know, we could get lucky this week. Keep your bits crossed for us.