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OK, Yes: A Really, Really Nice Day

November 20th, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Weather is boring when it’s not happening to you. Where you are. Right now.

But I have complained often enough about our seven-month summer here in the UAE that I feel as if I owe it to nature to mention that it was just amazingly fine on Friday. It would have been hard to order up a nicer day.

Friday here is like Sunday in the west. Most people have it off. (Newspaper journalists excepted, of course.)  And what do you do on a Sunday when the weather suddenly turns fine?

Yes. You go outside. Have a picnic. Play games. Sit in the mild sun.

People here did that, too. I saw them before I went in to the office.

Four men and four women strolled onto the 30-yard-wide strip of grass and stunted trees that runs next to Airport Road. They appeared to be carrying a lunch. I tried to puzzle out where they might be from. (Expats trying to ID other expats being a common activity here; usually, people just ask.) The men wore western-style pants and shirts. But the women were in fell-length black robes that included head coverings. The men did not appear to be Arabs; more likely guys from the subcontinent. But women over there generally don’t wear the big black robes and cover their heads. Afghans, maybe?

Still don’t know. Leah saw them and she just guessed, too.

Kids were playing pickup cricket in front of the school, using the “park” as their outfield. Two women, perhaps from the Philippines were sprawled on the grass with their shoes off. Several men stretched out and slept. A guy in a delivery truck pulled up just behind me as I was walking down the street, and hailed me several times. I didn’t turn for the first 2-3 salutations because it isn’t often that non-westerners call out to westerners, so I assumed he was shouting at someone else. I finally turned around, and this guy of about 40 just said, “Hello!” from about 30 feet away. So I said, “Hello!” He was there with his small son, and they ended up lolling in the grass, too.

So, low 80s, mild breeze, scattered shreds of wispy clouds overhead. Blue sky. No dust. No apparent smog. Low humidity. It was the sort of day when the idea of “UAE as tourist destination” seemed quite logical. If I were in England, experiencing nine-hour days, this time of year, and wrapped up in layers every time I ventured outside … I’d pay good money to come down here for a week of what we had Friday.

It was the sort of day you would order up in heaven, if you controlled the thermostat.

There. I said it. It was nice here. Amazingly nice. Perhaps the nicest day in the year-plus I’ve been here.

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