One grumpy old man in Dub@i says....

Being new in Dub@i, and if you are like me.....you would have
- taken wrong turns, even if you were using GPS because so many roads are undergoing construction or upgrading. You could, just like me, ended close to seventy kilometres on a wrong motorway before you can find a way out.

- Trusted a delivery man blindly when he promised to deliver your piece of furniture at 6pm..you even re-arranged your schedule to wait for him....and planned to go out for dinner afterwards. When he failed to turn up.....you believed his story that he was on the way and "will arrive in TEN MINUTES, sir!" By 9pm, your children were hungry, and you were close to being angry...and the delivery man has been promising to arrive in TEN MINUTES for the last twenty times! Finally, you had toast and fried eggs for dinner, and switched off the light to sleep...afterall it was already 11pm. Then, it happened! They rang the gate bell....!You rubbed your eyes, it was 12 midnight, and by the time they fixed the furniture it was 1am....

- Rushed early to send your children to school.....and you arrived within close proximity of the school in twenty minutes....got stuck at the round-about which happened to be a major intersections under construction, and crawled inch by inch for forty minutes to get pass it!

- You feel terror in your heart everytime you drive on the motorway. In your rear view mirrow you see huge four-by-four vehicles come tearing down as if they were hunting you....and as you swerve out of their way, you noticed your speedometer was doing 120km....yet, they zoomed past, and within one minute dissapeared from sight. Such are the hurry of Dub@i drivers......and majority of cars are big four-by-four. My Beetle....looks so feminine and vulnerable!

- You got lost, and called your friend to ask for direction. Being someone familiar with Dubai, he told you to drive towards a Stadium which had its spotlight on which according to your friend is close to your residence! You followed the bright light...and got closer and closer and felt happier and happier. Just as you thought you have found your way...the bright light happened to be spotlights from hundreds of cranes working on a construction site - not at all a stadium! Darn......

- You agreed to the invitation of your new found friends to go shopping in Naif, and you thought they have taken you to Bombay!

- And if you are like me being new in Dub@i, you do need a lot of help from people who have been here before! You need someone to tell you where to buy your S@lik, how to pay for your parking tickets, where to find nasi lemak, and what to do if you are involved in a car accident. In less than two weeks, I have seen minor, major, and fatal accidents......they just happened!

Tonight I was summoned Dirham150 for parking in Kar@ma because I did not pay for parking, and the reason being - I didn't know I had to pay. Driving back, more misfortune - I didn't know I had to purchase a S@LIK card ( pre-paid toll card ).

- But, if you are like me......you take all those with a lot of humour and resist any tempatation to be angry. No one cares whether you are angry or not, or how you feel ....Dub@i is a city where its inhabitants are into 'rat-race' big time, competing like trees in a forest fighting for sunlight, and are brutally selfish in a manner where 'dog eat dog', and where promises are meant to be broken and no plans work as planned. Please help me God ......

- You truely treasure that very few people who still show they are humans, still able to be nice and helpful. We are lucky, we have met a few......

- If you were me, what would you do.......?