Blogosphere: January 12

Picturing the UAE

One of the beauties of blogging is that it allows the author to not just note down his or her thoughts on the fly, but also to illustrate their point.

Media is becoming more and more important in a blog, with images quite often becoming as important as words when telling the story.

Why paint with words when a photo will do? Obviously this means readers may have to find the blog entries to see them in their full glory.

Dubai's Seabee (www.dubaithoughts.blogspot.com) illustrates this technique perfectly with a tongue-in-cheek entry about traffic rules in the UAE.

Now, for those of us who live here, we can all nod in agreement at the wry observations, but pictures really add something to the story.

The blogger writes: "We have roundabouts on various roads. As already explained, we drive on the right side of the road, so we drive right through roundabouts. This does not, of course, apply to self-important drivers, who may feel free to drive to the left through roundabouts.

"Like many other countries, we have hard shoulders for emergency breakdowns and so on. This may be ignored if you are a driver of the self-important variety, in which case you may feel free to use the hard shoulder to get to the front of the queue."

Shortcut

Another regular and insightful UAE blogger, Alexander (www.fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com), keeps us informed about the latest happenings with the daily commute from Sharjah to Dubai… or more pointedly, the lengths taken to prevent people from taking sandy shortcuts.

"The increasingly insane attempts to block the shortcut have meant that this small stretch of inter-Emirate sand is now littered with concrete blocks, barriers, quite extensive sandy berms, trenches and a constant flow of people insisting on crossing anyway. We're a hard lot to stop when we've got an alternative to sitting on the road for two hours jostling with every other poor sod on his way to work.

(My other alternatives are, by the way, move to Dubai or ship out. I'm not doing the National Paints Shuffle or the Ettihad Road car park every day. No way.)"

You have to see the picture to… uhm… get the full picture.

Unattractive sights

Sticking with the loose theme of unattractive sights at the side of the road, Geoff Pound (www.experiencingtheemirates.blogspot.com) has laid down a challenge.

He writes: "Coming from Dubai or Abu Dhabi on the Sharjah–Al Dhaid Road, travellers come across what must be the ugliest sight on a stretch of road in the UAE.

"You pass the Sharjah Scout Camp on the left and approach an Industrial building with pylons in front of it before reaching a blue sign, reading: ‘Batayah, Al Fujairah, Khor Fakkan' and a sign to the new highway that goes east, reading: ‘Central and Eastern Region'...

"Is this the greatest visual pollution in the Emirates, or what other sight would get your vote?"

Others blogs have gone the way of becoming purely visual, a way of showcasing a city or the blogger's passion for photography.

Two of the best ones in the UAE come from Abu Dhabi, and are updated with a new image almost every single day.

The Abu Dhabi gal blog (www.auhgal.blogspot.com) usually showcases events in the capital, but this time went to Global Village.

Outdoor mall

She blogged: "The Global Village, open for about three months out of the year, has become a bit of a tradition in the UAE. Located just outside Dubai, this outdoor mall contains over twenty ‘countries'.

"Inside each country are vendors selling everything from the practical to the eclectic. This [picture] was taken inside India; seemingly to have the largest representation there."

Last, and by no means least, is the Abu Dhabi Daily Photograph blog (www.abudhabidailyphotograph.blogspot.com), which simply highlights a different slice of everyday life in the UAE, offering just a few words of explanation.

One of my favourite entries from the week was a shot taken in the Abu Dhabi bus station. The caption reads: "Welcome to the heaving Rawabi Al-Sham Restaurant and Pastry. Checkout the boxes of tea piled up on the back counter."