Happy Birthday Dubai Metro

The Dubai Metro (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

A year ago today -- at exactly 9 p.m., 9 minutes and 9 seconds on 09/09/09 -- Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, used the first ticket to board and launch the Dubai Metro.

When completed, Dubai's Metro will be the world's longest automated and driverless network, snatching the title from Metro Vancouver's SkyTrain by one kilometer.

According to the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), the Dubai Metro, which was launched under the slogan "My City. My Metro," carried 10 million passengers between September 10, 2009 and February 9, 2010.

The elevated viaducts are now part of the city's landscape as are the zooming blue carriages.

Last year, like thousands of Dubai residents, I walked out to  the street next to my house and waited for the first Metro, carrying Sheikh Mo and his entourage, to pass.

I have yet to use the Dubai Metro and was a bit in a pickle when thinking about how to mark the Dubai Metro’s first anniversary. But then I thought who better than Rupert to do that? It’s because on September 9 last year, Rupert (@rupertbu) parked his car and decided to commute solely by Dubai Metro. He has kindly agreed to write this guest post to mark the Dubai Metro’s first anniversary. Rupert writes:

Happy Anniversary my Dubai Metro (DM)

My very dearest DM,

What a track we have traveled in the past 365 days, with all the nay-sayers continuing to ignore the delights of our relationship.

Between us we have shared Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” set at a time when steam engines were only for England.

The impoverished Dorset peasantry of Hardy’s so depressing tales have been uplifted by the slanting sun coming through your panoramic windows.

James Joyce and “Dubliners” concludes with a Christmas Tale, when horses were still the means of propulsion.

My all time favorites, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” set during the First World War, and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” from 1944, were very brief interludes in our relationship.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” is 49 years older than you, but thankfully apartheid has moved on, though not eradicated.

In five short years I watched you being conceived by the yellow midwives, not knowing how close we would become in your very first year of operation.

Thankfully all those RTA spokespeople, one of whom was “Communicator of 2009," and the media commentators, who when questioned a year ago, then again in August, have still yet to travel on our tracks, now keep a relatively low profile.

Those fools who set themselves up as the Twitter and FaceBook  oracles have disappeared, possibly the complexity of RTA websites has put them in long-term care homes!

The ignorance of car-borne individuals who did not realize that the Nol Silver Card was the key to the paid-parking and also access to your carriages. I say let them wallow in their traffic jams, after all there is no accounting for taste.

Occasionally we have been disturbed by adventurous Scandinavian tourists joining us, but we knew they would swiftly jet-off to their countries.

So we have grown older by a year, yet we have transformed each others life, and “yes” we have some faults, but the magnificent work of engineering, that you are, works.

Do you remember how we drove one of your most voluble critics from Sharjah to Rashidiya Parking (why only two levels are open remains a mystery, a bit like all those fly-overs) then walked along to the automatic gates and he had to buy a ticket. We love those armchair critics!

All those people who traveled in the early days of your life are no more, thankfully, our fellow travelers are now the heart and soul of Dubai, going about their everyday lives.

I hope you enjoy our anniversary, alas I fear your later hours have not proved too attractive, so it may well be early nights for you post-Eid!

Thank you for the past year, I look forward to sharing more books with you, and I will allow you to share your charms beyond my very narrow focus, despite the best efforts of RTA not to communicate!

You deserve a better friend than me, but I will remain an ardent admirer, until that time that I move on to another country. Thank you for demonstrating the worth of public transport, you are the best gift I have ever received from Dubai.

As always your devoted servant,

Rupert

(This is a very parochial correspondence and may mean nothing to those beyond Dubai, but when visiting Dubai do try the DM, she works very well.)

My tuna and egg salads

A friend was having a little trouble with her tuna salad a few days ago. She was trying to prepare it before Iftar and it wasn't going that well. We were chatting about this on @Twitter and I promised Jano (@Jansy99), who lives in Amman, to share my recipe. And I'll throw in an egg salad recipe too, as they go so well together.

Tuna is extremely versatile and can be prepared in so many different ways. Indeed, if you Google "tuna salad," you get 704,000 results. Dare I make them 704,001? Why not!

I think the fun with recipes is to adapt them to your own taste and use whatever ingredients and brands suit you best. For example, I rarely use salt and I am economical with mayonnaise but generous with mustard.

Tuna Salad (serves 4)

• 4 cans drained tuna in olive oil
• 3 chopped pickled cucumbers (Dill pickles)
• 2 spring onions chopped
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 small can of Green Giant Niblets sweet corn (198 grams)
• 2 tablespoons Maille 1747 Fine de Dijon (Dijon mustard)
• 2 tablespoons French's Classic Yellow Mustard
• 3 tablespoons Lesieur mayonnaise
• Stir all the ingredients together first then add the forked out tuna and mix well.
• Add a sprinkle of black pepper on top.

I find that egg salad (for which there are 5,930,000 results on Google!!!) pairs well with tuna.

Egg salad (serves 4)

• 20 eggs, hard-boiled and cut into little pieces
  
• 2 spring onions chopped
  
• 2 tablespoons Lesieur mayonnaise
  
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Maille 1747 Fine de Dijon (Dijon Mustard)
  
• 1 1/2 tablespoons French's Classic Yellow Mustard
  
• A sprinkle of pepper
  
• A sprinkle of cinnamon
  
• Stir all the ingredients together and then add the eggs and mix well.

For a light lunch or dinner, both salads are excellent on toasted brown bread. They can be prepared a day ahead if you have guests coming over and they taste just as good two days later. They also make an easy sandwich to take for your lunch break at work. And with the school year about to start, you could try packing a tuna and/or egg salad sandwich in your kid's lunchbox.

A hidden gem in Dubai

The late Sheikh Rashid's Majlis

Built in 1955 in what was then a sparsely populated neighborhood of Dubai dotted with date palm groves and fishermen shacks, “Majlis Ghorfat Umm Al Sheif” is a hidden gem of times gone by that is now sitting in modern Dubai's posh residential area dubbed Jumeirah III.

I have been passing in front of it at least once a day for the past four years. There’s a big road sign indicating the Majlis on the corner of Jumeirah Beach Road right next to Reem al Bawadi restaurant and Ibn Sina pharmacy. I often saw busloads of tourists entering or exiting “Majlis Ghorfat Umm Al Sheif.” This week, I finally decided to stop and find out what the venue was all about.

Set in a 3,300 square meter fenced and gated lot, “Majlis Ghorfat Umm Al Sheif” is one of the prime historical sites in Dubai because it was the summer residence of the late Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum (1912-1990). When the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan called for the formation of the federation, Sheikh Rashid, who became ruler of Dubai in 1958, was the first to join on December 2, 1971. He was thus effectively co-founder of the United Arab Emirates.

The Majlis (which means a place to seat special gatherings), is named after the Umm Al Sheif pearl fishing bank, home to the most valuable natural pearls. This summer residence, which caught the sea breeze in the days preceding desert coolers and AC units, eventually became Sheikh Rashid's retreat and that of his family and friends at a very important juncture in Dubai’s history. He regularly held meetings there to discuss political and social issues.

The main Majlis in the two-storied structure is 14.9m long and 7.7m wide. The ground floor is an open veranda called leewan or rewaaq (Arabic for portico or porch) with a few short columns. A small store is located at the northern side near the staircase to the upper floor, and still has relics of the past, including pots, jute sacks of provisions, cooking utensils and coffee containers (to serve Sheikh Rashid’s guests). Then, there's another spacious terrace and the Majlis itself, furnished in the age-old fashion with its walls dotted here and there with a rifle, a munitions belt, an old transistor radio, a clock...

The Majlis was built according to the time-honored style, including air inlets in the walls, using gypsum and coral rocks as well as Kandal timber imported from East Africa and date palm fronds. The window frames and doors are in solid teak wood. The windows do carry the breeze from the seashore nearby. When I was there, walking around and taking pictures at noon on Wednesday, (September 1), it was about 44 degrees centigrade outdoors. But as soon as I entered the main Majlis, it immediately felt cooler with a current of relatively fresh air.

The second Majlis sits outside the main structure and is open and airy and built from date palm fronds. It has now been transformed into a seating corner where visitors can have cold refreshments.

Take a walk around the Majlis with me...

The Majlis was built around a Falaj (crevice) irrigation system that is still operational today. This traditional Omani irrigation system, also used in neighboring countries, consists of tapping underground water that is then led by man-made subterranean channels to villages where it is used for irrigation and domestic purposes. The water flow of Aflaj (crevices) is relatively constant and varies according to the amount of annual rainfall and drought periods. In this case, the water comes from a natural well and is carried all around the grounds to a pond and then out again. The Aflaj are used to water the grounds, which are dotted with palms, a pomegranate tree, lemon trees, frangipani (fitneh) and the likes.

Although it was very hot when I was wandering around, the melodious sound of the water flowing in the canals proved both soothing and cooling.

It doesn't take long to go around Sheikh Rashid's Majlis and the entrance fee is only 1 dirham (or $0.27). It is well worth it, I thought.