Highlights of the last few days
5 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Friday, February 22 at Friday, February 22, 2008.
- Eating at an Afghani restaurant filled with absolutely badass looking Afghani men, who were rocking their tribal gear like it's going out of style - fur hats, flowing reams of beige cloth, crazy beards...they looked like the kind of men who knew their way around the business end of an AK-47, the kind of guys I'd want around if I was lost in the desert, the kind of men who could fix a flat tire by furiously swearing at it and beating it with a stick. We had girls in our group, so we were led upstairs to a private area, where curtains were drawn around us to make sure nothing....dishonourable...could happen.
- Having Cairo flashbacks galore as I was led around the city on an apartment hunt by a succession of apartment brokers - most of them Egyptians. They were just exactly the same as a Cairo apartment broker, as if they had been headhunted or just instantly teleported from Cairo to Abu Dhabi. Just slimy enough to be creepy but not slimy enough to want to get away from? Check. A little over-eager to tell you all about all the foreigners they are friends with/work for/have photos of on their phone? Check. Happily lead you on a series of pointless, timewasting missions to completely innapropriate places? Check.
- Driving to Dubai, in the middle of a sandstorm, with our newspaper's property correspondent in the driver's seat. All the way there (it's about 90kms from Abu Dhabi to Dubai), he would look out the window at vast expanses of desert being prepped by earthmovers and bulldozers, saying "that will be a new beach city, 50,000 houses....oh here's the new residential city, 100,000 houses.....here's the $50 billion industrial zone..." The UAE will remain a giant construction site for a long time to come...
- Having Cairo flashbacks galore as I was led around the city on an apartment hunt by a succession of apartment brokers - most of them Egyptians. They were just exactly the same as a Cairo apartment broker, as if they had been headhunted or just instantly teleported from Cairo to Abu Dhabi. Just slimy enough to be creepy but not slimy enough to want to get away from? Check. A little over-eager to tell you all about all the foreigners they are friends with/work for/have photos of on their phone? Check. Happily lead you on a series of pointless, timewasting missions to completely innapropriate places? Check.
- Driving to Dubai, in the middle of a sandstorm, with our newspaper's property correspondent in the driver's seat. All the way there (it's about 90kms from Abu Dhabi to Dubai), he would look out the window at vast expanses of desert being prepped by earthmovers and bulldozers, saying "that will be a new beach city, 50,000 houses....oh here's the new residential city, 100,000 houses.....here's the $50 billion industrial zone..." The UAE will remain a giant construction site for a long time to come...
Terrifyingly spot on with the second paragraph.
dude youre so taking me to that Afghan place if I come to Abu Dhabi any time soon...
"The business end of an AK-47" - i like it... it reminds me of that story you once told in Dublin about "... the business end of this hammer..."
adam you bastard i've been trying to find your for ages - send me an email address or something. tom dot gara at gmail dot com...
You're taking me to the the Afghan place too, they sound sexy.