The Mute Herald

The following day we went to Uptown Motor City, on the map it is just under the Dubai Autodrome.

It is a bit more out of the way, but designed as a close community in that there is an emphasis on open spaces, landscaping, family living.

The apartments themselves were adequately large and fitted, with no real issues.  I was impressed with the quality of some of the finishings, e.g. the windows and door to balcony.

• The good: very nice outdoor spaces, facilities (gym, swimming pool, basement parking, security), comfortably spaced apartments, good standard of construction, close to Emirates Road, close to the largest Spinney’s in Dubai, other shops / cafes to open soon.
• The bad: no other developments / attractions close by apart from the autodrome (but I’m no petrolhead), surrounding areas still under varying levels of construction, to get to Emirates Road there are only temporary small single lane access roads for now.
• The ugly: apparently rent prices actually went up since the last couple of months. Hopefully they stabilise a bit by the new year.

The end of tenancy contract is coming up, so off we go house hunting once again.  A relative compared it to spring cleaning, or rather how to avoid it.  Instead of letting a tornado loose in the apartment for cleaning, we just skip boat.  But with the falling prices and our changing needs it would be pointless and expensive not to move out.  With changing needs I mean that the office might move to a different location, so I have to take it into consideration.

First we headed to Jumeirah Lake Towers, a number of towers built around an artifical lake, just beside the (largest man-made) Dubai Marina.

There are a lot of them still under construction, but the ones that were ready were generally nice.  While viewing one of them my wife found out she was scared of certain heights – we were viewing a large 1 bedroom apartment on the 30th floor.  Unfortunately it was night and we weren’t thinking about taking good pictures, except for the roof top jacuzzi and pool.

The window on the left actually shows the drop down from the 35th floor, but it was not as bad as the view from the 30th.  The walls around the pool meant lots of shade throughout the day.  Not necessarily a bad thing in Dubai.

• The good: facilities (security, carpark, gym, pool, sauna, steam room), stone-throwing distance from Sheikh Zayed Road, cat-throwing distance from Metro station.
• The bad: sand everywhere, no place for outside strolling (yet), except after a 30 min excursion to Jumeirah Beach Residence, no clear exit to SZR – there are still only single lane bumpy access roads.
• The ugly: the whole area is a construction site (and all the hazards this entails), and I don’t think I saw the “lakes” that the place are named for.  Still under construction?

There are many things one encounters upon Dubai roads, among which are: vehicles (of course), fog (this time of the year anyway), workers on bicycles, and remains of blown out tyres.  I have seen black arcs of rubber on all the major roads, repeatedly.  The RTA has been stepping up its campaign for regular checking for worn out tyres, as these are a cause of accidents (exact stats not available, sorry).  The main culprit for these seem to be the larger commercial trucks and vans.

While the RTA’s intentions are admirable, I must say that its implementation is not.  At least today in our corner of Dubai, more specifically the exit from International City.

Police were accosting all vans and trucks to the side of the road, grounding them there if there tyres were in bad condition.  During morning rush hour.  At a point in the road which already is, by virtue of poor design, a bottleneck.

I was led to a 3G / EDGE coverage map while browsing through Amazon Kindle’s pages, and when I zoomed in on Malta (which according to them has no coverage), the map looked thus:

Which is kind of funny.  Usually you get the capital city or the airport name, but this is a first.  For the non-residents, Gzira is where the oldest profession used to be most prolific back in the days.