Play Artist

It has just downed on me that I live in the future. That’s right. I live in the future of my childhood, when people talked in video-phones, and ate things ready from small boxes or bags, and flew to space, and drove flying cars.
Granted; cars don’t fly yet. But pretty much everything else is amazingly similar.

I wake up early. (Ok, just rarely, but it is known to happen.) It’s 8:30 and I put on my turquoise and brown bikini’s – not the nasty Brazilian type, but the ones with huge bottoms, to match mine – and head to the community pool. I stretch my beautiful matching towel, lie down, put on my miniscule ear buds connected to a really diminutive device that plays over four thousand songs with amazing stereo quality, besides displaying photos and movies, and get my phone. And my phone is future itself: thanks to it I check on all my recent emails, reply to some, read documents, exchange text messages with my team, access the web. Actually, I do my early check-in for an upcoming trip to South Africa. I work. And I’m by the pool. I feel like one of the Jettisons.

But what really brought this up to my mind was today’s lunch time.
I got into my great new car, connected my iPod, pushed a little button in the wheel panel, and commanded: Play artist Matt Nathanson. A beautiful and artificial female voice confirmed: now playing artist Matt Nathanson. And it started.
I always knew this was coming some day. I actually voiced it to my mom, when I was little, that one day I would be able to work from the beach – and no, I was not picturing selling fried fish and beer. But now it has happened, I can’t seem to stop being amazed by it.

Now all I’ve got to do is wait for the teleportation.
It might take some time until it becomes commercially viable, but who knows how long my generation will live with current genetics advancements. And then, who will need flying cars anyways?

The Cars Soap-opera

Next month it would have been three years; three very short, very fast years with my beautiful Nissan Murano. But this also meant the warranty was about to expire. It was time to look for a new love.

A Nissan Murano makes you wonder why anyone would ever look for another car. Its design is gorgeous. Its engine, award winning and so powerful it makes such a big car fly. It’s the safest car in its category: safer even than Volvos. Who cares about Aston Martins, Maseratis, Ferraris, Porches, when you have a Murano? Yes, love is blind.

Last Wednesday I finally left it behind, parked on the side street of the Ford dealership. It took them only two days to sell it. I wonder who is the lucky bastard who got it... It was the first time in my life that I suffered for leaving something material behind. I even spent the next few days looking at every pearly white Murano on the roads hoping to see it again, like a lost boyfriend from a different time, from my lost youth. It made me feel like a teenager again. Not such a good feeling.

However, after five whole days without a car waiting for HSBC to act as a competent corporation, and almost loosing my license in the process of getting another car registration – if you ever considered driving in the shoulder in Dubai, think again! – I got my new car. My dark grey Ford Flex.

This would sound like a perfect happy ending. However, I had ordered a dark grey Flex with a pearly white ceiling (they look a bit like giant Mini Coopers, if they had an offspring from a marriage with a Range Rover), and they delivered it with the dark grey ceiling instead. I should have killed someone and demanded the car I had booked. However, I liked the one they gave me so much – even though it looks a little less funky – that I decided to keep it. It still looks like a pimp’s car, with its different ambient colours and jazzy design. It absolutely rocks!!

When I set in its sporty black letter seats, connected my iPod (it comes with a special bay for it) and automatically synchronized my Blackberry, I though I had died and gone to heaven. This car made the Ayrton Senna within me meet with my inner super nerd. I’m so happy. It also placated my inner Santos-Dumont, since it feels as big as a plane in its seven-seater glory.

However, when another three years pass by – and I know they will come and go far too fast for our own good (yes, you are getting old too) – I will let this one go more gracefully. No matter how cool it is this new car of mine, the charm and magic of a first love lost won’t be there anymore.

Sandy

Something dusty this way comes... Another sand storm day in Dubai.
Silica snakes swiftly sliding over the asphalt.
Masked and curved construction workers dragging their frames through incomplete buildings.
Everything inexorably changed into incoherent shadows.
Brownish skies. Greyish moods.
Frustrated tourists hoping for emerald beaches and umbrella drinks under the sunshine.
A girl dreaming of a bluer weekend in Fujeirah, where the sand is warm, and cosy, and most welcome.