Deaths waiting to happen

All the publicity about minibus drivers being a danger on the roads seems to have passed this driver by.

The morning jam in Dubai Marina created by the RTA which I've posted about several times. We're sitting in the queue as patiently as we can when the minibus full of passengers uses the wrong side of the road and negotiates the roundabout the wrong way.



The passengers should lynch him.

It was nothing.

The other day I mentioned the little fire at Atlantis and included a pic of the aftermath.


As I said then, the management is saying it was nothing really, it certainly won't delay the opening on September 24.


A friend sent me a Powerpoint show and I thought you might be interested to see one of the photos of the small fire that caused no problems.

A relaxing change...

I've managed to upload the hundreds of Singapore photos, I've started to go through them and I'll post a few in the coming days.

To start, here are a few from my nightmare.

I was really looking forward to getting away from the relentless construction in Dubai, the endless red & white barriers and flapping red plastic.

The taxi from Changi Airport pulled up at our hotel...


Red & white barriers!


Red plastic!


Iconic developments, complete with artist's render of the finished thing!

The length of Orchard Road is being developed, the footpaths, the landscaping, buildings being replaced or renovated.

There's less dust than here but jackhammers clatter non-stop, which we don't have to put up with here.

So much for getting away from the construction.

Something else similar to Dubai - you come across some interesting signs about the place.

A Chinese shop selling very Chinese clothing...

And this one had me doing a double take...



Ye Olde Englysche Bar.

Englysche?

Vehicle safety standards

I've often posted about the number of fires when vehicles crash here, and I've asked the rhetorical question of whether our safety standards are lower than other countries.

In today's Gulf News a report on the booming market we have for carmakers says how easy it is to ship cars here. It includes the throw-away line: Emissions and safety standards are also low.

I really think that's the problem behind the number of fatal vehicle fires.

The full story is here.

New No Entry sign

It may be old news to you but I've been away and came across it for the first time this morning...



(All perfectly innocent surfing by the way, I just wanted to check whether Secret Dubai was still blocked.)

The other beach romp...

Just a quick PS update on the beach romp court case I mentioned yesterday. The two stars of that show asked for a slap-on-the-wrist-naughty-naughty-don't do-it-again-sentence to be passed promptly so that they can go home.

They might reflect on a not dissimilar case, in which the Court of Appeal has just upheld the sentences of a month in jail for two ladies "for kissing and fondling each other and engaging in "indecent acts" on a public beach in Dubai."

Then they can go home - actually they have no choice, deportation after the jail term was the sentence.

The report is here.

Back to blogging.

Two weeks in Singapore, arrived back in Dubai yesterday evening and this is a rambling bits-and-pieces post of things that come to mind.

Dontcha love Dubai International Airport? It seems to take as long to get from the aircraft to the exit as it does to fly from Singapore. They say that the skeletons of lost travellers have been found in the labyrinth of corridors, although that could just be a rumour.

DNATA seemed to have run out of trucks to fetch the baggage from the aircraft to the carousel, it took forty-five minutes and the bags appeared one or two at a time as though the handlers were carrying them individually from the plane.

Over an hour after we disembarked we finally got out of the airport.

And so to Dubai.

Not sure that I missed much, but then to be honest I haven't been keeping in touch.

But it's deja vu all over again now that we're back.

It took fifty minutes to cover one kilometre in Dubai Marina this morning, with our beloved RTA obviously deciding the best way to deal with the gridlock they caused is to ignore it. Well, they don't live in Dubai Marina I'm sure, so taking two or three hours to get to the office isn't their problem.

The closed bridge I talked about before is still closed - why open it when that would simply result in the traffic being less gridlocked?

People are still using it though, a whole fleet of small sedans to big 4x4s were jumping up the kerb, through the roadworks and off across the bridge.

Of course a lot of them are too important to wait until they get there to jump the kerb, so they drive down the wrong side of the road into the oncoming traffic - like this one, wrong side of the road, wrong way round the roundabout and across the truck, causing a jam in the opposite direction...



Then we have a fire on a construction site. Situation normal there then.

This one made the news though - it was in the US$1.5 billion Atlantis Resort, the flagship development of Palm Jumeirah. The lobby area had what looked like a big, big fire with a lot of damage.

The resort people are saying the hotel will open as scheduled on September 24, but there are conflicting opinions. Looking at the Reuters photo published in Gulf News I'd say they don't have a chance...




Then the beach romp case gets a mention, the case being adjourned until September 9.

I loved the optimism of Michelle and Vince, the stars of the show, who asked for a speedy verdict so that they could return home soon.

They're not expecting a jail term, obviously.

The good news is that my regular coffee shop has the Ramadan curtains up, so I can at least start the day as usual with a couple of double espressos and the newspapers.

It'll take a day or two to settle back into the swing of things I'm sure, and catching up with the news on all your blogs is high on the list.


How was Singapore?

Construction everywhere, rain every day, humidity which I always find much worse than Dubai's - it's relentless too, never below about 75% I'm sure. So this was not our best visit.


A rare view from the hotel room...




The usual view from the hotel room...




It was a working trip for Mrs Seabee, I just tagged along for the ride and had planned to do all the touristy things while she was working. I gave up on that, but we still had a reasonable time. We went back to favourite restaurants, found some new ones, spent time with family there

I'll post some photos when I've sorted them out, if I can find any that I think are interesting to anyone but us.


The stories I mentioned are worth reading by the way. They're here:

Atlantis fire.

Beach romp.