Just went outside for the oxymoronic concept of a post-exercise “cool down” here in Abu Dhabi in July.

And what did I espy?

New dumpsters!

In Abu Dhabi, dumpsters are placed in the streets. Where everyone can see and smell them. Not hidden behind a building or tucked into a sort of fenced-off enclosure. Here, they’re right next to pedestrian walkways.

And then the sun beats down on them during the long, long summer … and the idea is pretty rank. Especially since I recently read that “all odors are particulate-based.” So, I’m breathing the rotten meat in the refuse?

Anyway, the dumpsters here in the Khalifa University neighborhood were old and battered. Some of them were missing their tops. Often, they overflowed, even when they had tops.

No one has individual trash/garbage pickup here. You carry your stuff to the nearest dumpster and heave it in there, and hope the poor saps on the trash trucks come along and pick the whole mess up sooner than later.

(This town generates tons of rubbish; the dumpster not far from our gate is always filled, even though it is dumped almost once every day.)

And a word about dumpsters. We don’t technically have any here. Dumpster apparently is a proprietary name, for one thing, and the company doesn’t seem to do any business here … and second, the Brits, in their insistence on having a different word for everything, apparently call dumpsters “skips.”

(Yes, skips. How the word “skip” relates to garbage, I have no idea. I challenge a Briton to inform me. We argued over this on the copy desk one night, saying Yanks have no idea what a “skip” is … the Brits saying they have no idea what a “dumpster” is — even though the world is pretty specific, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, my point was … let’s find a word in between that both sides will understand? Trouble was, no one could think of one.)

So, the old battered metal dumpsters are gone, replaced by plastic “Lavajet” brand dumpsters, which are plastic. Presumably they can take some beating and pop back into their original shape, being plastic.

In theory, too, we are supposed to be getting some receptacles for recyclable stuff like glass, paper and plastic. That might ease some of the pressure on the volume of stuff in the main dumpster.

Yes, it was Steve Martin  in The Jerk who announced “the phone books are here, the phone books are here!”

In this case, the new dumpsters are here!