I had a lunch getogether this weekend with some of my ex school buddies who are working here at DIC. It was great. We laughed. A lot. For no apparent reason. At our teacher, even ourselves. It felt good....no, it felt great.

I had a smile on my face the entire day.

I contrasted this setting to another where a friend who has not been brought up in Dubai but had lived here for abt 5 years, kept going on and on about how lousy and materialistic life in Dubai was. He called it shallow and apathetic and even racist. Most of it I can agree with. But I was still defensive. In fact, me and my cousin were verbally assaulting him with reasoning and what not. The funny thing is, amongst ourselves, us Dubai kids always curse the city for what its become. The bars, the hookers, the change in attitude....its undeniable and shameful.

There is a word for it people.....its the loss of innocence. And that loss hurts just as much as any other in this life.

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badtameez, storyteller

you’re right in that it is mostly the time one yearns for . . . the alain i grew up in is very different from the one i live in now . . . almost none of the old people are here and new friends don’t have that same familiar feel . . . lekin as true as it is that it’s the people who make a place, there is something else about al ain that keeps me coming back . . . a sense of peace and solitude . . . even if i don’t find myself in all the old places again, the silence helps me become native once more

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sorry for jumping in so. storyteller, about yearnings...i think its more a yearning of time, cities change their feel, their look and even their demographics after a while but those who have moved on tend to reminisce as if things would stay the same forever.
That’s what I learnt when I went to Abu Dhabi after 4 years. Not that much time and I could still recall a lot of memories assocaited with places. but this place is so dynamic, one fine day a barricade comes up, buildings are pulled down, new constructions come up.
Abu Dhabi Corniche isn’t as it used to be. Port zayed area isnt the same. TCA isn’t the same, even the schools I went to aren’t the same, teachers have moved on, our social circle has moved on. but as we look back...things stand still, I can still close my eyes and hear waves lapping against the breakwater...hear our childhood freinds yelling in the background, friends of whom one is now dead. cruel these memoirs can be sometimes. now i can go on and mourn my friend all day long. again.

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ansari:
now you’ve gone and inspired me. that excerpt sure is beautiful. maybe someday i shall write some sort of tribute to a place that i can’t seem to let go of but what left me a long time ago.
makes me wonder; what am i yearning for; a place or a time?

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storyteller: beautifully said You reminded me of an essay I read, that EB White wrote about James Thurber, the famous American humorist and New Yorker veteran:

’’The whole world knows what a funny man he was, but you had to sit next to him day after day to understand the extravagance of his clowning, the wildness and and subtlety of his thinking, and the intensity of his interest in others and his sympathy for their dilemmas - dilemmas that he instantly enlarged, put into focus, and made immortal, just as he enlarged and made immortal the strange goings on in the Ohio home of his boyhood. His waking dreams and his sleeping dreams commingled shamelessly and uproariously. Ohio was never far from his thoughts, and when he received a medal from his home state in 1953, he wrote, ’’The clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus.’’ It is a beautiful sentence and a revealing one.’’

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st - but all that is changing and you can get citizenship now for a price. So you can call it home - but would you really want to live and work there?
Faizan - thansk for the info.

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how very true

growing up in the u a e is a unique experience....you call it home but you can never call it your country. your country, that you visit in the summer (paratking in a grand drama of the yearly mass exodus into the sub continent), makes you sick and riddled with mosquito bites. then you have to leave to pursue higher education and God knows where thats going to take you....and yet when you dream ever so fleetingly of home, it is the streets of the u a e you see.

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badtameez #79

be it ever so humble, there is no place like home!

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this is getting interestting. so few dubai chowkies and yet the thread goes from strength to strength...More power to Expat kids and nose rubbing memoirs!

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storyteller......lol.....I havent had the chance to sing that since school!

MAN....that brings back memories.

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remember the national anthem...

aishi bilaadi NA nanna NA nanna NA nanna NAAA.........

(hugs hugs)
(rub noses)

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’’Haqiqi’’ makes sense now . Haqiqi indeed......

New attractions would include....err....I dunno.....I don’t get out too much, but I was away for about 5 years as well and the place that hit me the hardest in terms of total metamorphisis was the Sheikh Zayed road, I mean talk about Manhattan wannabe )

There are many things that are upcoming, and others that are seasonal (such as during the overhyped DSF etc). Of the upcoming stuff is the underwater hotel, the Palms, blah, blah......all probably not accessible to the general public. Others that would be available to all but would arent up and running yet....the festival city, the sports city....what not.....I’ll look for weblinks later on. Cant think of anything else at the moment.

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Faizan - am sure it is. I havent been for about five years. God such a long time. But am planning a visit around Sept/Oct for a week. What would be some of the new attractions other than the malls.
haqiqi - brotherhood!

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’Afaqi’ will have to be defined as well......)

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its the ’Afaqi’ nizam

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’’Haqiqi’’ needs to be defined here......

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