It's such a long, long time since I wrote the blog.
So many things have happened in between. I left my last job, joined another,
then left it after a bit less than 2 years.
First thing anyone who comes to Dubai in the summers notices is, of course, the heat. Quite different from India. It hits you like a wall. Anyways, I coped OK for a few weeks and now it's a bit cooler (though not 'cold' by any standards - you still need the aircon indoors all the time). And people in my office at Jebel Ali (outskirts of Dubai, on the Sheikh Zayed Road to Abu Dhabi) tell me that the temperature here touched 61C in peak summer - I'm lucky! The second thing you notice here is that Fridays are Sundays!!(:-)
Staying in a hotel apartment in Bur Dubai and commuting the 65-odd kilometers to office everyday, it's a more than 1-hour commute in the morning & an hour in the evening. Vehicles move at more than 100 KMPH here on an average (and some people even exceed the mandated max. of 120, speed at which the cars start beeping - factory setting!). However, the volume of traffic is so much that it crawls during peak hours. Many evenings (most!), the traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road is so much that (esp. when we get advance info. from one of the office cars going that way) we take the alternative route through Emirates Road (the road which connects most of the emirates in UAE), and still end up spending an hour on the road.
And all this even when the RTA (the road transport authority) keeps imposing toll tax ("Salik") on more and more stretches of the highway, perhaps to keep out the traffic. Alongwith this, the RTA has two more weapons in its armoury to reduce traffic - most free parking spaces of yore are being converted to paid parkings (about 2-3 US cents an hour) and, the biggest hassle of all, reducing the rate of issue of driving licences to a trickle (smart move - you can't drive if you don't have a licence, even if cars are much cheaper here than almost anywhere else).
First thing anyone who comes to Dubai in the summers notices is, of course, the heat. Quite different from India. It hits you like a wall. Anyways, I coped OK for a few weeks and now it's a bit cooler (though not 'cold' by any standards - you still need the aircon indoors all the time). And people in my office at Jebel Ali (outskirts of Dubai, on the Sheikh Zayed Road to Abu Dhabi) tell me that the temperature here touched 61C in peak summer - I'm lucky! The second thing you notice here is that Fridays are Sundays!!(:-)
Staying in a hotel apartment in Bur Dubai and commuting the 65-odd kilometers to office everyday, it's a more than 1-hour commute in the morning & an hour in the evening. Vehicles move at more than 100 KMPH here on an average (and some people even exceed the mandated max. of 120, speed at which the cars start beeping - factory setting!). However, the volume of traffic is so much that it crawls during peak hours. Many evenings (most!), the traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road is so much that (esp. when we get advance info. from one of the office cars going that way) we take the alternative route through Emirates Road (the road which connects most of the emirates in UAE), and still end up spending an hour on the road.
And all this even when the RTA (the road transport authority) keeps imposing toll tax ("Salik") on more and more stretches of the highway, perhaps to keep out the traffic. Alongwith this, the RTA has two more weapons in its armoury to reduce traffic - most free parking spaces of yore are being converted to paid parkings (about 2-3 US cents an hour) and, the biggest hassle of all, reducing the rate of issue of driving licences to a trickle (smart move - you can't drive if you don't have a licence, even if cars are much cheaper here than almost anywhere else).
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