Wave of SMS traffic ushers in New Year

The New Year started literally with a bang for many revellers on the streets, and residents complained that they could hear cars crashing through the night.

The Dubai Police did not have immediate figures on the number of accidents on the last night of 2002, but morning showed wrecks lying at strategic points off the Sheikh Zayed Highway and in some residential areas which also have hotels and restaurants.

At the dot of 12, midnight, the Etisalat network was overloaded as hundreds of thousands of people started sending text messages to their friends and relatives. The messages ranged from cute, mushy to outrageous and vulgar. The beeps heard everywhere were the texts dropping in message boxes of mobiles.

Tarek Sabbagh, a Lebanese marketing manager, said, "Believe it or not, I picked up my mobile at 11.45pm to call my parents in Beirut. Immediately after that I sat with my mobile for around 45 minutes scrolling through the New Year messages and sending back greetings in return.

Faris Twal, a Jordanian salesman, who was spending New Year's eve in a Dubai restaurant with his friends confirmed, "We were more than 12 couples in the restaurant. During that evening I guess that I listened to the largest number of different ringing and message tones in my life. Mobiles did not quieten down till around 2.30am."

As was expected there were huge traffic snarls in various parts of the emirates and one motorist said he reached his home in Deira after a one-hour wait in a line of cars which did not seem to move at all. "It would have taken me five minutes if I had parked my car and walked home from where I was," he said.

For some in Dubai, it was a night of disappointment. Thousands lined up the Dubai Creek to see spectacular fireworks. But it was a damp squib as nothing happened. The place was packed with families and children.

There had been no official announcement about any fireworks display, but people took it for granted that the Creek side would be lit up with fireworks and waited patiently in the cold.

There were fireworks, but elsewhere, near the Burj Al Arab and near the beach hotels. A spectacular fireworks show was also at Ajman near the Kempinski Hotel.

Restaurants and hotels were jam packed as everyone ate, danced and waited for the DJs to countdown the seconds to 2003.

Others celebrated the coming of the New Year with quiet prayers, and churches, specially the ones from the south Indian state of Kerala, were full.

The New Year morning was quiet with very few motorists on the roads as January 1 was declared a public holiday and few organisations kept their doors open with a skeleton staff.