I just got home from Chili's final walkabout for the day, which is a soothing time for both of us. He gets to stake his claim on little bits of the world, one last time before bed, and I get to appreciate Dubai at one of its calmest moments.
We walk behind our building, down "pee-row" - a stretch of gravel frequented by resident pooches, and a choice scratch n' sniff area for the Chili-dog - and then around the grounds of a power generation station directly adjacent. This sounds highly sketch, I realize, but it's well-lit and quiet. The facility serves as staging grounds for the countless construction crews working in this are, so there is new stuff to see every night. Bricks, paving stones, piles of unmixed concrete, gravel, two-by-fours, metal struts - I only wish I were building a retaining wall or a wishing well or something.
It's all left lying around wherever the workers dropped their materials at day's end, together with coolers, discarded gloves, the odd hardhat and of course, the ever-present giant orange spools. These big wooden beasts are used for coils of large, um, constructiony wires, and they give the area a sort of surreal, Alice-in-Wonderland type flavour.
The 3/4 finished Burj Dubai, to be (briefly) the tallest building in the world, towers nearby. (Check out a chart showing other ridiculously tall structures in the works). We're within walking distance of the Burj - through crazyland construction, mind you - but I like the night-time view from our "backyard" the best. They've installed searchlights and vertical rows of green and white vanity lights (I don't know how else to describe decorative skyscraper lights - if anyone knows, please tell me!) so the whole building flashes like a manic lighthouse. During the day, I can see the Burj from another angle - upside down, as I float in the pool. I tilt my head back, and it's just blue-blue-blue til the tower glides into view. A pretty sight (see photo) that I hope everyone will experience when they visit us here.
At night, though, the constant construction hum dies down considerably, as does the traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road. There's a light breeze stirring the palms, and just one sleepy security guard chilling out on a chair next to a round-about that's chaos during the day, but empty at night. I raise a hand, he raises a hand, Chili lifts a leg, and we all take a deep breath of the balmy night air. Then it's time for bed.
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