Living in Abu Dhabi takes a certain amount of mental dexterity. You see, the city likes to trick you every now and again – just to keep you on your toes. Common shenanigans include putting a building where there wasn’t one before, blocking off a street, digging a seemingly random hole. Last week, taking a shortcut back from lunch in an attempt to get out of the blazing heat, I stumbled across a surprise new excavation.
Where only a few days ago there had been nothing but smooth pavement and a nice shady path, my way was now blocked by a panelled off area containing a deep chasm and a large mound of rubble. Not too much of an inconvenience, true, but it’s not the first time it’s happened, and I doubt it’ll be the last.
It’s no wonder finding your way around the city can prove tricky – landmarks disappear at the drop of a hat, while shiny new buildings spring up seemingly overnight. I dread the day when the Salam Street roadworks finally come to an end, because I don’t think I’ll be able to find my way home.
And it’s not just the confusion, all the changes go hand in hand with a massive amount of noise. A few weeks ago, I was rudely awoken at midnight by a team outside my apartment who’d decided that that exact moment was the best time to embark on a journey to the centre of the Earth. Not really, of course, but I still haven’t figured out exactly what they were doing. Having eventually drifted off to sleep with the sound of drilling still ringing in my ears, I awoke the next morning to find that a large metal construction had now taken up residence outside my window. What it does, and why it had to be built in the middle of the night, I guess I’ll never know.
That said, there is something rather wonderful about living in a city where nothing stands still for too long. Instead of having to endure shabby eyesores, they are quickly removed and replaced with shiny new apartments or modern office blocks; and the newer the building, the more interesting the design – whether it’s tilted at a dizzying angle (Capital Gate) or a circular skyscraper (Aldar HQ). With such exciting things quite literally on the horizon, I’ve started to wonder how I’ll manage when I eventually move on and all the buildings stay the same from day to day. So, I guess I can endure the odd blocked shortcut and missing landmark, and I can live with the fact that I’ll occasionally get horribly lost, safe in the knowledge that something bigger, better and more exciting is on its way. If they could just wait until morning before building it, it would be very much appreciated.
