Dubai 06 - Queues

I gather, from reading the local paper, that people here are getting a little sick of things. Of course, I'm talking about the Letters page, so it's not just people here! The latest hated topic in my neck of the woods is queue jumping, specifically the drivers who push into a line of traffic, thus holding up two lanes at once (three if you count the guy who tries to squeeze past and stuffs it up).

Now I must really be fitting in because, altough I would never push in in traffic, I did go to the airport the other day and do something similar (and seriously, Dubai Airport is up there with San Rafael when it comes to quality and good layout. Actually, San Raf is better). I wandered up to my gate and came across a queue snaking to the left. Now I figured that if the queue is so stupid as to run to the left rather than straight, the sensible thing to do would be to form a new queue and merge. Sure, it was a queue of one, but it's an airport for crying out loud and seats are assigned. And I have French ancestors.

As luck would have it, I found myself merging in front of two Australians. Talk about confused: Their Anglo-Irish heritage told them to suffer in silence for the time being and bitch about it later, but their Australian upbringing told them to stand up for themselves. The following resulted:

Tall guy to short guy (sote voce hoping I'd hear, get embarrassed and go to the back): Look at this bloke.
Short guy: Huh?
Tall guy: Jumping in like that, etc etc etc

The queue moved on a bit, I continued to politely merge and politely ignore this poorly dressed buffoon, while he tried to wheel his oversized carry-on luggage into my feet. Then it got funny:

Tall guy (slowly and as if he was feeding an actor a line): Queue. Queue. Queue.
If this bloke had any cajones, he'd tap me on the shoulder and say, excuse me mate, go to the back. And I probably would have... considered it. Or at least let him go in front. But talking to yourself saying queue queue queue is just dumb. So finally I turned around, looked him in the eye and said:

Diddums

That went down well and elicited a "you're a blood idiot" (but an idiot in front of you in the line - ha!) and more luggage into ankles. A few more pleasantries came from him and then I eyeballed him a second time and suggested he accept his fate in this life and realise there are bigger issues at stake with a gentle

Get over it, mate

No response. He knew he was beaten by my superior reasoning. I turned back around.

Short guy: oh, he's your mate now. [grunt]

And that was it. I probably really ruined those guys' days and put them in foul moods. And I'm glad, because if you're 1) wound up that tight and 2) stupid enough to join an orderly queue that goes in the wrong direction and not merge yourself with the ready explanation of "I thought it was for something else because it started 3 gates to the side", then you deserve to have a shitty day.

Now I realise some of you might think that makes me a rude, pushy, arrogate queue-jumping bastard, but tell me you've never done it yourself. And really, except in traffic where it's dangerous, I'm with the French and Chinese in their attitude to waiting. Here's another one: I went to the hospital recently for my blood test and x-ray for my residency. I walked in to the place and the first room had a queue of several hundred Indians passively standing around waiting for god knows what. My Australian friend from the airport probably would have assumed that was a queue and meekly joined it. I went past it, found someone in a uniform and asked where to go for a blood test, and was back in the car a few minutes later. And I didn't even jump any queues. The Indian blokes could have been part of a post-Modernist art exhibition, or trying out for the world stand-silently-in-a-room record. (On the other hand, Indian blokes do seem to like standing around in groups...) Life's too short to follow the crowd - make your own queue.

Dubai 05 - My place

Dubai is made up of Deira (north of the Creek, a brackish body of water that disects the city and has only three crossings), Bur Dubai and all the stuff between it and Jebel Ali. Deira is a mysterious place I never go to unless I need a blood test for immigration purposes, Bur Dubai is where I work, and Sheik Zayed Road (SZR) is the main artery beween it and all the stuff on the way to Jebel Ali, including The Springs.

Now, I'm sharing a villa with a South African bloke called Chris out in The Springs. This is a really fake little suburb about half an hour down SZR from Bur Dubai. All the houses are identical and it's a bit like being in Legoland. It's a gated suburb or compound (ie, a bloke operates a boom on the only road in or out, noting down the licence plates of all cars, including the residents, for reasons unknown. Actually, I think the guy's a trainspotter, but the total loack of railways here has reduced the poor fellow to carspotting), and actually there are 11 (?) Springs compounds ingeniously named Springs 1 through Springs 11. I'm in 2. Next to me is Meadows 6, another Legoland compound, for people with a bit more money. Out the back of M6 is Emirates Hills which faces onto a small man-made lake, and this is where the really rich live.

How do I know they're rich? By the cars of course. Parked outside the mansions are gleaming new BMW X5s, and Land Rovers, with number plates like "80". And these are parked on the street because the garage is housing the Bugatti. It's pretty flash. Out in the grotty old springs it's just SUVs with number plates like D 456245 - nothing special at all.

It's come on since the satellite took the above photos, mind you. Everything is planted and green - I'll post some more photos later - and not just sand. It's nice and quiet and relaxed out here, which beats the hell out of living in the 24h construction site that is Bur Dubai...

I really have no ending for this post. Sorry.