Another one where the verticals are doing a lot of the work. He looked pretty keen to get on the train that was coming: so was I, as it was the first leg (well, second, if I include the five-minute walk there from the hotel) of my journey home. I might be back next year… I might not. I probably wouldn’t come to Dubai on my own account but it’s not a bad place I suppose.
Last day in Dubai. Taking a picture of attendees at the course I’ve been teaching on while here (undepicted…) there was a frisson of excitement as I pulled out my ‘vintage’ compact camera, as if usage of such things is simply anachronistic in 2026. I have tried taking photos on the phone, though, and it just doesn’t work as well when it comes to zoom and focus. I doubt this pic could possibly have been taken on a phone, not the combination of detail in the foreground and the soft-focus of the background, not from the distance at which I was standing, anyway. And it’s that combination that I like here. When this camera finally does die — and it won’t be long, I predict — I will try to get another one. And another, until we’re all so anachronistic that we’re not here any more.
A small, but nice thing about coming to work somewhere else is that it changes my commute to ‘the office’, or in this case, ‘the hotel in which the teaching is taking place’. Instead of sitting on a Northern Rail cattle truck in the February rain I get, for a couple of days, to take a 10-minute walk in the sunshine. I can’t just walk through the park though, as currently it is occupied by a food festival, the gate of which can be seen behind the sign. Maybe I’ll have time to check it out on Sunday, but not today.
Yes, I know, the skyscrapers are somewhat on the slant; but it was either them, or the sign. Such is the impact of cheapo gear. I’m impressed my camera still works, in fact: it’s reaching the three-year mark, which has been the historic limit for them since I started taking pictures every day.
Welcome back to Dubai, for my third trip here after 2019 and last year. Purely for work, well, except today when I had a day off thanks to teaching all of the weekend that is to come. Dubai Creek is why the city is here, being the inlet of the Persian Gulf around which the original settlement was founded. These days it’s just another part of the big shopping mall that the city has become, albeit with cuter buildings and some cats. Oh yes, and lots of seagulls.
In 1960 the population of Dubai was 40,000. As of today it is more than 3.7 million, and continuing to rise at around 5% a year (all figures from Wikipedia). In order to accommodate them, the city is also growing physically. What you see here is not ‘desert’, it is large amounts of sand that have been poured into the Persian Gulf — land ‘reclaimed’ because the sea is not a form of terrain that can be bought and sold. Go to Google Maps and search for “Dubai Island Villas”; you’ll find it just offshore from the Al Hamriya Port, and you’re looking at a photograph of it, as of 24th February 2025.
Captured, perhaps obviously, a minute or so after take-off from DXB this afternoon. I was sat right over a wing again and only got this because of the plane’s considerable roll to the right for a few moments, so this was the last I saw of anything except clouds for the next seven hours. That’s the end of this trip, then, but it seems reasonably likely I will be back in Dubai at some point over the next 2-3 years. It will be interesting (but perhaps also a little depressing) to see what this view might look like in 2028, say.
While we have been teaching in one half of the hotel’s ‘business centre’, the other has been occupied by a large number of extremely attractive models of both sexes, getting ready for the fashion show that occupied the ballroom this afternoon — a specifically Russian event, it seems. I think if I possessed this woman’s shape, not to mention her ability to support her posture on what looks like two narrow pencils, I’d probably become a model too. The guy on the right isn’t badly sculpted either.
Getting out of the general area of the hotel was desirable so I did what I usually do under these circumstances and went to a football match; this is taken outside the Zabeel Stadium. There were far more Emiratis there than are typically seen around the city, at least in the bits that I have been (only just over 10% of Dubai’s population are Emirati).
And this also offered an opportunity to add to the blog’s list of ‘Superlatives’ (see the bottom of the stats page) — the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at 2,722 feet/829.8 m, or over half a mile. It really is ridiculously tall. One day I might try to go up it but there’s no time on this trip and apparently the queues are outrageous anyway. I imagine going to the football is a better way of plugging into local culture.
I have rarely* had cause to complain about the food in the Middle East and the offerings here at the hotel in Dubai are no exception. It is no coincidence that this is the second shot from here to feature food, and in only four pictures thus far — see this similar effort from March 2019.
[*] there was one legendarily bad meal in Jeddah, though — the exception that proves the rule? Either way the memory of a liver-and-banana stew still lives with me.
Over the last two days I failed to mention my destination, which is Dubai — I will be here until Monday afternoon. Before returning home I may try to depict an urban scene, but it’s not a particularly photogenic place, in my opinion. Tall buildings, roads, flyovers. The Persian Gulf is over there somewhere, but getting close to it is not easy unless you are the guest of one of the resort hotels that line the beach, and I’m not: I’m here to work. (Yes, including over the weekend.)
But I did like this artwork which hangs on the wall of the pub/restaurant in which I ate my overpriced dinner. Better than landfill, anyway.
Regardless of anything else that has ever happened on any of my trips to the Middle East — I have never come away complaining about the food in any way. In my opinion — the nicest cuisine in the world…
Being 42 