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Published
in Gulf News, June 20, 2006
Shiver me timber!
The
first and only time in my life I have had to throw away an ice cream
was on my first trip to the US. I quickly learned that when in America
and presented with the food choice of 'small, regular or large',
to always go for 'small' - even when half-starved. Small
or no, the portions are so big that as I eat, I shudder at the thought
of champing through a 'regular', or unimaginably, a 'large'.
My
wife and I hoped this over-specification would spill from food to
that other basic need: shelter. We looked forward to asking for
'small' apartments and being shown 3,000-square-foot lofts overlooking
the ocean. Sadly, this wasn't the case, not even in Southern California.
Finally,
it wasn't size, or the relative lack of it, that bothered us. Most
apartments we sought were comfortably large, with huge common facilities.
It was the building material that got to us. Being children of the
tropics, we were used to reinforced concrete ceilings, tiled floors
and lots of stone or brick. So we were suspicious of wooden structures
with creaking floorboards, shaky steps and hollow-sounding walls.
It
seemed that three men and a machine could staple bits of wood together
to make a house in less than two weeks, a change from the cement
and steel disaster zone that is the Indian construction site.
To
make up for this material loss, the house hunting was a breeze.
And because the last time I was house hunting was in Dubai, I was
prepared for the worst. I'd dug trenches, bought tents, multiplied
our budget beyond reason and prayed for enhanced powers of equanimity
and persistence. However, less than a week after we landed, we found
ourselves signing the papers to our new home.
Oh,
the luxury of being able to walk into a building and be told, "Yes,
there are flats available" rather than, "The waiting list
is 20 years or 200 families, whichever comes first". Ah, the
joy of having real choice, not dilemmas such as: either raise a
family on your friend's sofa-cum-bed, or live in a studio apartment
the size of a suitcase for three times your monthly earnings.
But
the biggest thing going for Dubai is that flats, once found, are
familiar things. They have tiled floors, concrete walls and solid
balconies (not wooden "decks"). To our eyes, apartment
blocks in southern California are like slightly run-down forest
resorts. It's hard to take them seriously. We were lucky though,
the building we eventually found is 40 years old, and therefore,
has walls of concrete.
This
means we won't both hear and feel nearby fireworks as we do now
in our wooden hotel. Also, when my neighbour ten-doors-removed puts
down a suitcase, it won't sound as if she just came in through the
bathroom wall.
At
the hotel, as I listen to it creak and thump around me, and I'm
reminded of the Rudyard Kipling short story 'The ship that found
herself'. A steamer on her maiden voyage has a voice in every rivet,
plate and deck beam. Each part complains about the jostling and
straining as the ship navigates high seas. But by the end of the
journey, the ship finds herself, and all those individual voices
disappear as she learns to work as a single entity.
The
thought of gales and the give and take of joists and columns stops
me in my tracks. Just after signing up for our new home, I realise
why most houses here are made of wood. The San Andreas fault isn't
far away. This is earthquake country.
Too
late, our deal has been cemented.
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