There’s a construction crane blocking the street to our left. No problem. We’ll just drive ahead, right? I should have filmed this truck instead of taking a still. In the time that it took it to back up out of our way, a motorcyclist wove through and pedestrians added themselves to the mix.
Archive for the ‘Dubai traffic’ Category
Backstreets
June 16, 2009I’m easily amused
April 25, 2009I love WordPress and should have moved here earlier. I can see statistics of visitors to the site and if someone arrives at my site by doing a search, I can see what they searched for. Someone searched for “is kfc home delivery free in dubai?” I’m afraid they didn’t find the answer on my blog. However, I think most delivery here is free or for a very nominal fee. Everyone delivers. There are few drive throughs, but there is a lot of curbside service, where drivers just pull up to the curb in front of a restaurant, honk, the waiter comes out to take their order and later brings their food to their car. It causes a significant amount of traffic problems.
I haven’t had KFC in a very long time and I haven’t had it here in Dubai. (The one and only Burger King burger I’ve had here was very tasty and way better than any American fast food burger, so I suspect that the KFC might be better, too.) But, I say, screw KFC, I am hooked on Marrybrown chicken sandwiches. It’s not chicken patties, but actual chicken breast, breaded, on a bun with the works and HOT. So yummy. I haven’t had sushi in about two weeks because I’ve been distracted by Marrybrown chicken. Now that is saying something!
Now for something completely different.
Bus stop to nowhere
I took this picture because it so aptly portrays the wonder that is Dubai. A bus stop bench in the middle of a construction area advertising the Mega Mall. It doesn’t get any more succinct than that.
Permanent sign about temporary road layout
This, too, is iconic of Dubai. This sign is metal and firmly planted in cement. Road diversions here seem to go on forever. With the economic crisis causing construction postponement and slow down, I’m not sure if there will come a time when roadways are stable and construction is rare. I hope so.
Results of a blow out
Unfortunately, another characteristic of Dubai is automobile accidents. We witnessed this one and pulled over to check on the driver. Amazingly, he had only one scratch on his arm. He was in the roadway you see in the background when his front left tire blew. He was in one of the left lanes and traveled all the way across to the right and then rolled and flipped when he hit the curb/flower bed. His car is wrapped in the irrigation hose. The temperature is heating up here and people are encouraged to have their tires checked because the increased heat of the pavement often causes blow outs like this one.
So, this entry ends on a not so amusing note. We are thankful that he was not badly injured and that he did not collide with other cars. It is amazing to me that more accidents don’t happen here, but most drivers are very defensive drivers constantly on the lookout. That makes all the difference.
Watch out!
April 12, 2009I’m a big girl now! I drove myself to work today (and yesterday). I needed to work on Saturday for a special event and Daddybird needed to stay home due to the fact that our ID cards were being delivered. So, circumstances forced me to brave the traffic. Actually, my biggest fear has been that I won’t be able to get out of our parking space. It is very tight and our parking space neighbor drives a large SUV, so we have to park very close to the cement pillar on the other side if we want to get the driver side door open. After getting out of the parking space is the equally difficult challenge of pulling out into traffic and negotiating the first few blocks which you understand if you have watched the videos I’ve posted previously.
Now, however, I have to figure out the way to Daddybird’s office to pick him up. This I was not prepared for. Could be interesting.
Rain in Dubai
March 26, 2009Wednesday evening we had RAIN and it has been raining off and on since. It began with a spectacular lightning and thunder show. This first video is of the worst of the downpour that we were in. It involved large hail pelting the car. Watch for the guy who is riding a bicycle. By the end of the video the hail has stopped but the rain is coming down so thick that the wipers can’t possibly keep up and we are “rain blind.”
The next video is more of the same driving rain. Notice that everyone turns on their hazard lights, as if that makes it better. After every foggy day, there is an article in the newspaper telling people not to use their hazard lights while driving in fog. I’ll have to check and see if there is a similar article after this rain storm. The comment I make about maybe not going to work the next morning is because if this had kept up all night the flooding would have made it impossible to get anywhere. Notice that already there is significant puddles (less than 10 min. of rain).
This third video starts with one of the many rather spectacular puddles. Keep in mind this is within a few minutes of the start of the downpour.
Next morning, still raining, but not flooded, so we are off to work. If you compare these to the previous videos of our drive when it’s dry, you’ll see that the rain has little impact on people’s driving or pedestrian behavior. We saw a few guys who had put a plastic grocery bag on their head and tied it so that it was a sort of hat. At one point in this video I point the camera at the storm drain that is definitely not doing its job.
The next, and last, video is of the end of the drive to work. Watch for the construction workers who are perched on top of cement blocks in a puddle. They created their own stepping stones in an attempt to get across. The automatic focus of my stupid camera was focusing on the windshield, so everything outside of the car is blurry. It is not really that blurry in real life, even in the rain.
Silly roundabouts
March 13, 2009Here are two of my favorite silly roundabouts. In this first clip we have just turned into the Outlet Mall. We can’t turn into the parking area until after we have gone around a dead end roundabout. It was very windy that day, which is why I started recording. This is the day when we saw someone washing a car in this parking lot in this wind.
This next clip is a slip road that connects two major roadways. We take this route often. We can’t just merge onto the road at the left where we want to go. We have to first turn right, go around a roundabout, then back the way we came to where we can finally merge onto the road. The “soundtrack,” if you will, is coming from the car radio. We usually listen to an Emirati station even though we don’t understand a word (yet). This snippet seems to be the call to prayer.
Most fun I have had in a long long time
March 8, 2009Last Wednesday we went to a goodbye dinner party for Adrianna at her favorite restaurant, Special Ostadi (not to be confused with Ostadi Special, which is right next door). It is located in Bur Dubai (across the Creek from where we live). It didn’t take very long to drive there, but took a lot longer to find parking.
The restaurant is a “hole-in-the-wall” with real character. There are a wide variety of clocks, old cell phones, and baseball caps hanging on the wall. (The clocks don’t necessarily tell the correct time.) It was crowded and busy. We hadn’t even stepped in the door and joined our party when the waiter/owner saw Paul and said “Holly man!” Not sure if he was calling him “holy man” or “Harley man,” but once again, it’s the beard. When another of our friends arrived, an attractive young lady, the only open chairs were hard to get to and the waiter offered to carry her over everyone’s head to a chair. She was a little creeped out by that. It was late and I couldn’t eat much if I wanted to sleep, so I just had the 3 dirham soup ($0.80) and nibbled on the cucumber appetizers. After the meal comes unlimited free tea. He gave me quite a time about getting free tea when I hadn’t paid for food. (He didn’t know we are big tippers 😉 I nibbled on some of the meat others had and it was really yummy, so we will have to go back when I can manage a full meal. Additional friends kept showing up and it was a very fun evening. The teasing escalated when our Syrian/Russian friends (Rami & Sami) showed up. The waiter brought a plate to one of them, told him it was a special salad, when in reality it was the peelings from the appetizer vegetables. He brought out two small plates of dates. One had two dates — this was for four of us — the other plate was heaping with dates — it was for Adrianna only.
It was one of those evenings when your stomach muscles hurt the next day because of all the laughing.
Closer than they appear
March 8, 2009
“Objects in the the mirror may be closer than they appear.” Actually, I’d like to know what the literal translation of this is. I bet it isn’t exactly that.
There’s a PSA campaign currently. The sides of buses are painted bright yellow with sayings like “Changing lanes suddenly can be confusing.” or “Speeding is not thrilling when it goes out of control.” We saw a bus driver being confused by someone changing lanes suddenly just last night. Seems to me that speeding is at its most thrilling when it goes out of control.
They should be drilling into people’s head that children should be belted in. We are frequently seeing children roaming around the inside of moving vehicles and/or sitting in the driver’s lap. Considering the cultural emphasis on family, it is strange that the importance of child seat belt safety hasn’t occurred to them.
Random thoughts
March 6, 2009We’ve coined a new phrase — road neener neener. Paul doesn’t have road rage. He has road neener neener. If he can keep someone from cutting in front of him or pass someone who is driving ridiculously and leave them in his dust, he takes great joy in this. It’s what keeps us sane while driving in Dubai.
Totally embarassing moment: Paul called to tell me he was there to pick me up and I walked out to the place he usually waits to pick me up. I saw a little white car in that same spot. Walked up to it. Opened the door and almost got in when I realized that the driver was a strange woman? So, I say “Oh, sorry, wrong car. … Where’s my husband?” and I look around to find our car. She says “I don’t know, but I can give you a ride home.” Luckily, I saw that he had pulled into a parking spot a short distance away, excused myself and proceeded to get in the right car. No more operating on autopilot for me!
Miss Kitty came to visit me at the library while I was working the late shift Tuesday night. She came to the front door and meowed. I heard her through the double doored lobby. So, I went out picked her up and petted her a bit. Not enough to satisfy her, but I was working alone, so couldn’t be away for very long. She is starting to shed voluminously. The weather is warming up again. I suppose it won’t be long before she is hairless again.
“A grouchy Sudanese telling an American living abroad in an Arab country to go see an Indian Chiropractor. Only in Dxb.” – our friend Muhammed Ali (yes, that is his name.) This pretty much sums up Dubai (Dxb is the airport code – you can probably see why I find PDX and DXB confusing.) Dubai is the ultimate in multicultural and our growing group of friends and acquaintences is definitely multiethnic – Indian, Singaporean, Burmese, Russian/Syrian, Sudanese, Eqyptian/Swiss, Swedish, North Carolingian, South African, etc. They are incredibly funny, intelligent people I love to hang out with.
At our favorite restaurant one night, we had a new waiter. He asked Paul where he was from (it’s the beard again). The waiter then struck up a conversation, in his best Globish version of English, asking us how we thought Obama was doing in his first month. He then proceeded to tell us that it is American politics/foreign policies that people hate, not Americans and that the Americans he has met are all nice people. He really wanted us to understand that there is no animosity toward American people. Interestingly enough, this came up in another conversation with someone else a few weeks later. So, I wonder. Can American’s say the same?
Car washing/cleaning is rampant here. There are no fund raising car washes here because that would require a business license (also there are very strick rules regarding charities and fund raising here). However, you can get your car cleaned in nearly any parking lot. There is a man who cleans the cars in our apartment building parking lot. We pay Dhs 100 ($27) per month. He goes over the body with a duster, wipes the windshield and washes with water and rag only when there is something the duster can’t handle (like when Paul drove through the Sharjah industrial area after it had rained). This is done several times a week. Paul tried putting tips of 5 or 10 dirhams under the windshield wiper, but the guy just deducts that from the monthly fee. Festival City mall seems to have a troup of car washers hanging around in the parking lot just waiting to wash your car while you are doing your shopping. Kind of amazing. We saw someone washing a car in an open parking lot during a sandstorm. Might as well have been spitting into the wind.
We love Dubai. … Have we said that already?
What I’m talking about!
March 2, 2009This is part of our trip to Fujairah. We had to negotiate several roundabouts (they love roundabouts here). We took the wrong road at one point and had to double back which is why you will see the mosque twice.
Watch carefully at the end of the video you will see a typical example of the dangerous driving that goes on here. In fact, this was the second time this had happened that day. A SUV pulls up behind us, flashes his lights. When we don’t get immediately out of his way, he pulls around us and continues to weave through traffic.
Driving in Dubai
February 20, 2009We’ve been attempting to video the driving experience for you. However, we’ve determined that we must have a magic camera, because traffic is uncharacteristically easy when I have the camera on. It is when I don’t have the camera on that the most amazing things happen. So, these are three fairly mild (and maybe downright boring) versions of our drive to work.
Pulling out of the garage and the first three-four blocks are the most challenging. Not only does Daddybird have very limited visibility of oncoming traffic (due to SUVs parked along the street, but if we don’t time it just right, there are wandering crowds of construction workers due to the shift change that happens right about 7:30 am. One morning Daddybird nearly ran over a woman who was on our left and she thought it would be a good idea to walk in front of a car that whose driver was looking to the right for oncoming traffic. So, now my job is to be on pedestrian watch. It is amazing how little responsibility for their own safety pedestrians take.
Things to watch for in these videos: Pedestrians walking in the street when there is a perfectly good sidewalk on the other side of those parked cars. Cars double parked or stopping to let someone out, blocking traffic. The waltz that is the intersection where three streams of traffic come together. In one video the oncoming car flashes his lights to let us know we can go. Uncharacteristically polite! There are also bicyclists to avoid.
This third video is fairly boring until about half way through when a truck pulls in front of us without much warning and directly after that a car blocks traffic trying to change lanes. The kicker is that he doesn’t just want to move over one lane, but he wants all the way over in order to make a left turn.
The rules of the road here include:
1. Don’t move over just one lane. Move from the far right to the far left or visa versa. Cross as many lanes as possible in as little distance as possible.
2. Don’t get into the back of the line when you can move up to the front and force others to let you in.
3. If you want to change lanes, do not slow down and pull in behind the car in that lane. Speed up and pull in front of them.
4. Brakes are a strange and unnecessary feature on your vehicle.
5. After clearing a speed bump you should accelerate at top speed until you hit the next one, especially in parking lots.
There is a great blog post by someone else that documents Dubai traffic complete with pictures to prove the points. http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.com/2009/01/dubai-driving-tips.html
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