Not a ghost bus: No 33 from al-Ghubaiba to al-Qusais
There’s as song by the late Swiss chansonnier (singer & songwriter) Mani Matter – the song about the train stations where the trains always have already left or not arrived yet (“Ds lied vo de Bahnhöf wo dr zug geng sho abgfahre isch odr no nid isch cho”). I feel strongly that somebody in Dubai should write a song about the busses that never arrive or have already left.
Dubai’s Road & Transport Authority (RTA)
Don’t get me wrong – the Dubai bus system is much better than its reputation, and many busses travel frequently and quickly. At least when there’s no traffic jam. But there are some busses – even indicated in the latest bus map issued in February 2009 – that are probably the stuff of myths and legends.
I tried to take such a bus recently when going to the Ibn Battuta mall at the very outskirts of Dubai (it’s literally halfway to Abu Dhabi). The nice man at Satwa Bus Station had advised me to take bus No. 90. I should have taken that worried look on his face as warning: After an hour of waiting, I hadn’t spotted a single no No. 90 anywhere. Of course, I could have taken a taxi. Blame it on my perverse pleasure (or misplaced scientific sense of duty) that I remained seated at the station just to disprove the hypothesis of the existence of a bus No. 90.
Two hours and 50 “C15s” heading for the Iranian Hospital later I think I can confidently declare that bus No. 90 does not exist, or at least does not run on the hourly schedule advertised.
On related news of cryptozoology
Another mystical creature in Dubai is the vacuum cleaner that we supposedly are able to borrow here. For more than three weeks now I ask the guy at the entrace at least twice a day if I could use it to clean my (in the meantime rather dirty) wall-to-wall carpet.
“It’s under the stairs” – “No it isn’t.” – “Oh, then somebody must be using it – try again tomorrow.”
Bastakiya Art Café after the rain. For aspiring Sherlock Holmeses: Which two details prove that this picture was indeed taken after the rain?
“Oh, the cleaning people are using it right now.” “Well, when will they be done?” “In an hour.” After an hour it still was nowhere to be seen. This is a clear case of the “bukrah, in sha’allah” syndrome, the middle eastern cousin of the “mañana” syndrome (to which I might dedicate an entry in the future – suffice to say that the meaning of “bukrah”, tomorrow, can mean any point in time in the future except the next couple of hours).
It then turned out that the apartment’s vacuum cleaner is indeed a ghost. It is no more. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile – it is an ex-vacuum cleaner!, so to speak. I could use the cleaning staff’s vacuum cleaner instead – which of course was equally difficult to get. But after almost three weeks, I now finally managed to get my hands on the damn thing. My, does my room look clean now!
And now for something completely the same
The weather. It is raining again.
