Gulf News web editor Adam Flinter plunges headlong into the blogosphere to find out what bloggers from the Middle East and beyond have on their minds.
Pick of the week: Dubai fire
Response time
Liz came home for a late lunch at one or two, and as we ate I saw a billow of dark dark grey smoke out the window.
The crazy thing, while we were home in the States last week my Dad was asking about fire and rescue in Dubai. I couldn't name the closest fire house to us, which scared him. And judging by the lag time noted in this article, I think we know how quickly the response time is.
http://newlywedindubai.blogspot.com/
2007/01/news-dubai-fire.html
True heroes
Sadly the fire at Jumeirah Lake Towers yesterday is reported to have cost four workers their lives.
Many more were hospitalised but thankfully the biggest problems seem to be smoke inhalation and minor burns and all are expected to recover quickly.
The emergency services seem to have done an excellent job, so congratulations to everyone involved. I have enormous respect for the emergency services, especially firefighters. I've said in my posts about the Aussie bushfires that the word 'hero' has been overused to the point of it being meaningless, but firefighters to me are true heroes. They run towards the thing that the rest of us are running away from in terror.
http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.com/2007/01/
reports-of-four-dead-in-tower-fire.html
National pride
Emirates Towers is simply brilliant and the Dancing Towers will be breathtaking if realised as planned. But these are among the few stand-out examples of truly good architecture amid the forest of towers which makes up "new Dubai", many of which would be deemed too kitsch or plum ugly even for Las Vegas. Within the last few weeks we've had a developer seriously proposing an "anthropomorphic" skyscraper. And only now do I realise what Edinburgh lacks; a forty-storey tower in the form of a kilted Highlander looking down on Princes Street. Wouldn't that be a source of national pride, after three hundred years?
http://sandlander.blogspot.com/2007/
01/festina-lente.html
She sees seashells
In Dubai, my eyes are lifted towards the skyscrapers and Dubai Shopping Festival advertisements.
In Ras Al Khaimah, my eyes are lifted towards the minarets, which until recently were usually the tallest landmarks on the eye's horizon, or towards the mountains and the sea.
But lately, I've begun to look down. At the ground. At the seashells. And I'm not referring to seaside saunters. I mean when I'm marching towards taxis, dashing to the store for milk or crossing vacant lots to get to hotbreads or the RAK hotel. Downtown RAK: there they are. There are seashells everywhere. All over Ras Al Khaimah, seashells litter the ground. They are also built into bricks and poured into the Maris Corniche pavement. They are everywhere. In Khozam, you can walk along and suddenly find an entire pile of small seashells perched outside someone's gate.
http://chezsinjab.blogspot.com/
2007/01/seashells.html
Witch's brew
Some of the world's worst cups of tea are brewed in Dubai. It's not just the Indian version of builder's tea — stewed teabags, powdered milk and seventeen sugars, served in a plastic cup.
There are the nightmare brews of Dubai International Exhibition Centre, accompanied by foul tiny cartons of "Tastes Like Milk". There are the hotel conference cuppas made from tepid water spurted out of a catering urn seasoned with the burnt coffee that it specialised in for the first decade of its working life.
And there are the "upmarket" (extortionate) hotel lobby teas served in a teapot that stews a witch's brew of thick dark tannin. There are the five star restaurants that serve you a cup with a tacky teabag hanging out of it — or worse — a wrapped teabag accompanying a mug of water so lukewarm that it will not even dissolve one nanogranule of sugar.
The only consistently palatable tea is Moroccan tea, partly because the sugar and the fresh mint can disguise a world of bitter evil.
http://secretdubai.blogspot.com/
Saddam doll
A toy manufacturer in the US is trying to make a bit of cash by producing a hanging Saddam Hussein doll.
If you are interested, probably not in buying one, but just seeing what these guys do, Herobuilders has made more than 100 figures. You might remember the OBL one and there is TB dressed as action man.
The question is — who buys this stuff?
http://grapeshisha.blogspot.com/
