Ramadan kareem indeed. We're a week into the Holy Month and I have to say, Ramadan's a great time. The Ramadan tents are all beautiful and opulent and fantastic, I've had a lot of interesting conversations with people about what fasting means to them, and I've bonded with heretofore unknown non-Muslim colleagues as we make beelines to the kitchen, pockets heavy with contraband snacks. The hours are also dreeeeeeeamy... 9-3 officially means that I'm usually out of the office by 4:30, which means that I have a WHOLE OTHER DAY after work... every afternoon this week I've run errands, gone to the gym, gone to yoga, gone out for dinner or shisha, and then come home and been like "Really? It's only 11 PM?!" Fabulous. There's also an awesome "witching hour" around sundown when everyone's at iftar and the roads are empty (reminiscent of Saturday afternoons in Knoxville when the Vols are playing) - you can whiz across Dubai like it didn't have the worst traffic in the world.
In other news, stemming with a conversation I had with some friends last night, I'd like to present to you a list of the neighborhoods, landmarks, and points of reference that I use on a daily basis to navigate Dubai - mostly because it highlights the bizarre (but accepted) practice here of calling every new thing you build a "city" or a "village." The conclusion we reached is that when you have a country with no fixed urban history, no established settlements, and no real past as anything besides a vast unmarked desert, you have to start from scratch - and this leads to a map peppered with places like:
-Industrial City
-Internet City
-Media City
-Studio City (where all the movie-films will be made, if Hollywood moves to Dubai as planned/hoped)
-Knowledge Village
-Academic City
-Culture Village (under construction; "culture" component TBD)
-Lifestyle City
-Global Village
-Textile Village
-Heritage Village
-Festival City (home to IKEA and our favorite mall... it truly IS festive)
-Outlet City
-Motor City (nope, no irony there)
-Sports City
-Golf City
-International Endurance City (endurance horse-racing needed a city)
-Falcon City of Wonders (the best, right? home to replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, etc)
-Old Town (still under construction, making it the youngest Old Town in the world)
-International City ("Chinese immigrants! We have built you affordable housing made from Tinker Toys and pipe cleaners! And we will call it 'international!'")
-Healthcare City
-Humanitarian City
-Aid City
-Lost City (where? why? how was it lost?)
-City of Arabia (future home to Mall of Arabia, one of the 3 competing "biggest malls in the world" that are currently being built in Dubai)
-Silicon Oasis
Further to this, the main expat neighborhoods (which we like to disdain, since we live in a much cooler/less plasticine area) have equally perplexing names:
-The Springs (features no springs)
-The Greens (features no greens)
-The Meadows (features no meadows)
-The Lakes (features man-made lakes!)
-Emirates Hills (features no hills, unless you count the sand dunes they had to bulldoze to make the neighborhood)
-Green Community (not to be confused with The Greens; "green" here was originally conceived to mean environmentally sustainable, but that proved difficult ["what? SHINY!"] so they decided "green" just meant there would be a lot of plants there - which seems green=sustainable as well until you remember the whole desert bit).
And with that, it's bedtime!
