Part IV - Metro, fines & Wafi

There were some nice things I noticed during my short stay.

It's like New York

The metros were still spic and span – no dirt or garbage and tiles shining. The government was certainly spending enough to keep up the maintenance for so long. I saw a couple of South East Asians scrubbing the staircase in the metro. It’s ultimately the ground level workers who decide the outcome!

Last year I thought that perhaps people in Dubai might not use the metro much; but I was wrong. A lot of office goers used it for commuting. In the mornings and late in the evenings, the metros are packed with crowds; reminded me of New York crowds. There were only two lines - the red line and the newly opened green line. You had a train every 5 minutes. There were also a few of the metro staff who walked around like inspectors in the train. Once one man was told, “Chewing gum is not allowed Sir.” He was lucky to get away with just an advice. Eating and drinking was prohibited even in the stations - it helped them maintain cleanliness.


(pic to the left is an interesting structure in Wafi mall)

The RTA (Road & Transport Authority was responsible for the buses and metros) had a good call center. You could call them any time regarding reaching a destination and they would give you the bus numbers and approximate time it would take. The same information was also available online. Another useful system was that each bus stop had a board which displayed bus timings for the buses that came to that stop. Of course it isn’t exact but it gives a fair idea of how long you would need to wait.

Speaking of crowds, the crowd psychology applies even out here. Once when the train came, people were pushing others to get into the train. It was orderly; it seemed like everyone was just thinking, “I have to get in; who cares about others.” They kept one compartment reserved for children and women but even those got crowded during peak hours. And the crowd psychology applies at all levels across ages.

Fines

My sister told me a story about a man who was caught by traffic police for crossing the road instead of using the walkway bridge. He was taken directly to the police station. He had the guts to cross the road exactly at the place where they had put a huge warning sign for pedestrians saying “Use the footbridge”.

In Abu Dhabi, the police started levying spot fines on people littering the streets. It had helped the city become cleaner.

Kids help business

There were just a few malls that I had missed in my previous visit. Wafi city, with Wafi Mall, was one of them. The ‘city’ is a complex with a hotel, mall, spas and even some residence. The mall is themed on Egypt. There were these pharos and sphinxes. Inside there was a huge Christmas tree - it was beautiful. And as usual there was a Santa sitting in a little house; to have a snap with him you had to pay. All kids were naturally pulling their parents to the queue - around 15 families were in queue. Kids can certainly help businesses by making their parents spend.

I noticed it in McDonalds as well - Alvin and the Chipmunks part 3 movie was running and kids love the chipmunks. We went to watch it because of my niece - she has seen the second part on dvd probably hundred times at home. Part 3 was okay; not as good as the first one but kids were happy. McDonalds offered a kids meal in which you’d get a chipmunk toy - there were 8 toys to collect and invariably all kids asked for the kids meal mainly because of the toy.

There is a souk (market place - pic to the left) that is kind of hidden within Wafi mall. But it is a beautiful place worth checking out. There are different divisions like Turkish, Egyptian etc. with plenty of shops. Being hidden, there was hardly anyone except for us and the shopkeepers. In another section of Wafi, there was Asha Bhosle's restaurant called “Asha's". We stepped in to just take a look at the menu - there was one menu just for drinks. Ambience was good but food prices were very costly.

Part III - New year near the Burj...

This vacation trip was quite sudden – hardly any preparation or planning; on a Saturday evening it was decided that I’ll travel and I hadn’t booked the ticket or applied for the visa yet with my travel date being Wednesday. Struggled with booking a ticket online in Emirates because of a software bug and had to make a phone reservation for the ticket – online booking costs less than phone booking. On Monday bought the ticket, applied for a visa in the express category and Tuesday late evening got the visa as well. Emirates seems to have some tie-up with the visa authority because other travel agents and airlines said that it would at least take a week for visa processing since this was the peak season; I got mine in 18 hours.

Heading to the Burj Khalifa

We returned from the trip to Hatta and Fujairah on 31st afternoon. The fireworks in the world’s tallest building (situated near the Dubai mall), I heard, were grand last time and so we didn’t want to miss it this time. The Government had obviously learnt from last time’s mela – they diverted all traffic in Dubai mall, extended the working hours for the metro, displayed advertisements to encourage the public to use the metros on New Year’s eve and had plenty of traffic cops deployed. We dropped the idea of going into the mall because with two kids going in that crowd and returning back would be quite a challenge. We started at 10pm from home planning to watch the fireworks from the vehicle. The roads leading to the mall were packed and as we neared the Burj Khalifa, a lot of cars searched for places to park or places to double-park while seated inside the vehicle. The public transport buses were packed even though every minute (literally every minute) there was at least one bus heading to the mall. After 11pm, the crowd of pedestrians increased rapidly - the young, the old, Asians, westerners, variety of fashion clothes, traditional clothes and just about everything.

Happy new year

When our Pajero clock read 12:00, there was nothing. Even after a couple of minutes there was nothing. My bro-in-law said that they’d off the lights at 12:00. At this point, there were 3 buses waiting in traffic and the drivers opened the door in the main road itself. People stepped out of their vehicles leaving the cars on the main road, anxiously awaiting lights to go out. And then it did. All lights on the world’s tallest building went off for a few seconds.

The fireworks were awesome; I never remember having seen fireworks being shot from different floors on a building. It was synchronized well and you had fireworks going from the bottom of the building to the top and then from the top to the bottom. There were a couple of fireworks from the left and right side of the tower as well. There were plenty of colours – red, yellow, orange, white, purple, green. It lasted just 7 minutes. And after it was over, all the vehicles honked to signal the new year. For a while it appeared like a large palm tree in lights.

After that traffic was at a standstill for 35 minutes while pedestrians walked out of the Dubai mall. 35 minutes non stop there were waves of people; reminded me of Ranganathan street! People came in different attire – temperature was 23 degrees but pretty chill and yet there were few women in mini shorts and some in low back (or no-back) dresses. One RTA employee walked briskly past us as if it were early morning; he must’ve had one hectic day managing public transportation and it wasn’t yet over.

(the above pic was the end - that's the world's tallest building in a blaze of glory)

My bro-in-law said, “This firework display will help with developing business.”

It probably would – can help boost tourism with images of fireworks from the tallest building being published; and from the mall perspective, getting space in the mall must be very expensive. This mall is crowded on pretty much every day because of the added attraction of the Burj Khalifa and the fountains.

It took 1.5 hours for us to get back home; there were some nice Tamil songs playing on FM. And on our way back we saw that the other road (heading to Dubai mall) was packed with traffic for a few kilometers! People who had started late were stuck far far away!

Part II - Practice makes perfect

When we stepped out at 9am in the morning, the Pajero said the temperature was 14 degrees centrigrade; deserts are cooler than normal in winter but I don’t remember it being so cold 10 years back; global warming?

Practice

The business of SIP Abacus (Sociable Intelligible Progressive - an odd expansion) program for kids was certainly flourishing well in the Gulf. Hundreds turned up for the annual competition for different grades to determine who are the best students in math calculation (even though you had to pay extra for writing the test). They taught kids on solving math problems in the mind. Education certainly is very good business!

In the parking lot, at least 40% of the vehicles were the large ones – the large jeep type vehicles. It is a quite common sight in the US and even in India you tend to see more SUVs these days; the only problem is parking and maneuvering them in our side-lanes. Certain kids take competition too personal; after the results were announced, I saw a girl in tears because she didn’t win any certificate or medal. SIP actually gave plenty of medals; you had the champion trophy, then a runner up position, then a bunch of students for achievement awards and another bunch of students for something else – all these positions for each level of SIP. Her mom was consoling her saying you can practice for next time; “practice for a month and you will surely win.”

It seems last year there were more medals distributed - almost every kid who took the test was given a medal; that dilutes the value of winning. The daughter and mother reentered the school building with the mom wiping off the tears which poured intermittently.

Archipelago sinking?

We headed to Palm Jumeirah (the man made structure in the shape of a palm tree - this is called an archipelago). There have been complaints that this structure is sinking slowly but the developers have refuted the claim; whatever the case, the structure was still well above sea level. On reaching the end there was the beach – not really a beach; there was a fence and then you had plenty of large stones just before the sea. There were a few benches before the concrete fence and they were unoccupied as we headed towards the end of the beach. The sun was beating hard but you didn't feel the heat because of the cool breeze; temperature was in the low 20s. We ate our lunch and then jumped across the fence after seeing another guy who was sitting alone on a large stone; it seemed like he had just finished his lunch and was contemplating seriously on something. Nice place for reflections. I jumped from the fence, underestimating the height and strained my ankle with the drop. We spent a few minutes before heading back home.


A nice place for a picnic - beach with stone slabs instead of sand.

The tower stands tall

All of nature’s wonders bring about a feeling of awe and so do man-made wonders; the sight of the height of Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world) was fascinating even now. In the future this would probably be commonplace but for now it was only the Burj standing way above all other skyscrapers in the Dubai skyline. Shooting for the movie Mission Impossible from this tower would have been exciting – hanging from the 133th floor; wow.

We wind up the last edition for this year... am heading over to catch the crowd at Burj Khalifa for the new year... time to contemplate on the year; and makes you (or at least me) wonder, 'what did I do this year?'