Two months before I left London, on a warm, breezy day in the gardens of Soho Square, I made a frightening observation. Through some rudimentary calculations, I quickly deduced that, were it not for the guiding hand of technology, something like 80 per cent of the people in my immediate vicinity would probably have been crushed under the wheels of double decker buses or haplessly wandered into a pit of poisonous snakes long, long ago. Almost everyone who walked through London’s trendy media district that day was jabbing their digits at some kind of app; tethered to small shiny devices which they pinched and prodded. Though doubtless all earning in the region of £35k, their glazed-over expressions confirmed that the very concept of common sense had long since vacated their meticulously coiffured heads.
In truth, this screen-jabbing homogeneity, this apparent necessity to be constantly connected in order to achieve the most basic of goals was one of the things that made me want to escape London for simpler, less technology-dependent climes. I yearned for the minor insecurity of setting out into a city without the confidence that I knew exactly where I was going. Maybe I’d have to stop and ask a passer-by for directions. Maybe we’d then become great friends and watch football together.
The latter, sadly, hasn’t happened yet (though that security guard who pointed me in the direction of Abu Dhabi mall was definitely on the verge of suggesting a burger and some 10-pin bowling), but suffice to say I’ve endured my fair share of dead ends and the flustered panic that comes with realising you’re a good mile and a half away from an appointment that started some 20 minutes ago. It was liberating.
But obviously, it was never going to last. Two weeks in and running late for an important interview, I reluctantly dug my iPhone out, flicked on the GPS and fired up the maps app. I punched in the name of the hotel I was due to be arriving at in approximately 26 seconds’ time and yelped like a wounded creature as I registered how far away the little red dot was from the little blue dot that denoted my location. My crinkly, paper A-Z had let me down. What on Earth had possessed me to think I was better than the glazed-over, gadget enslaved, floppy-fringed morons of Soho Square?
Dejected, I held out my arm to hail a cab. If I was lucky, I’d meet my subject half an hour late and get five minutes of rushed interview time. Still, at least I had something to do on the way, namely ripping my worthless, non-battery-powered maps and guidebooks to shreds with my angry hands. But then, as I slid my phone into my pocket and looked up, I noticed something. My hotel was right across the street. I was going to make it.
As it turns out, Google Maps is pretty unreliable in Abu Dhabi, since barely anything has been assigned its correct location. It’ll swear blind, for example, that some of the city’s bigger hotels are in fact underwater, 200 feet off the coast of the city. And if you’re looking for any shop or business smaller than Carrefour or Etisalat, forget it – it simply doesn’t know. So ditch the iPhone and smash your BlackBerry into tiny pieces – the best way to navigate Abu Dhabi is to sharpen your wits, chat to the locals and – crucially – open your eyes.
