Friday, April 25, 2014

I’d expect more kinetic action from any company associated with the shrewd Mr Habtoor…. Labouring over the idle cranes across the road

We rented a second car for this week. Not a big issue, we have a good relationship with a local supplier, goes back over 3 years now.
Diamondlease (a Habtoor Group company) has been a trusted partner of ours for most of our life in the UAE.
Yes, the Lancer we often get for the second vehicle is a ‘dog of a car’ but the Mitsubishi Mirage I’ve had for months is a snazzy little set-of-wheels.
The staff are helpful, courteous and know us by our names. Happy.

Much less happy I’m about the centre-piece of the view from my balcony, a farce of motionless cranes strangely stationary within the bustle of the rejuvenated Dubai city. (see pictures);

Yes, I’ve written previously about the Habtoor Leighton Group’s stagecraft known as the Dubai Pearl, an ambitious iconic project that is enjoying a Sleeping Beauty type of a slumber party at the moment, half-or less completed, possibly waiting for a new ‘prince of an investor’.
A sad little gathering of construction machinery guards the naked structure, frozen in time, also waiting for a more fulfilling working future.

There were many readers that found my musings over this trivial issue below their threshold of tolerance for my liking to dither over the insignificant facets of this mega-industry, I work in.
Some voiced their concerns, others just switched off.

Fully respecting their right to do any of those two actions described above, as well as hanging around for another lot of mulling over the inconsequential, I am sad to need to report that the cranes are still as they were a week ago, or 2 or 5 or maybe even 50;
Can’t go back in time to a fix point of a year or more ago, as the view from our home was significantly different than then is now.
Granted, that even at that time I had a slightly obsessive interest in the activities of the company that is in charge of this site too (Habtoor Leighton Group).
I was a bit more interested in the idle workforce then, inactive cranes were less of my worry.

Maybe it is a good sign that I can now afford to be mulling over this matter, day in and day out, slowly watching as time passes over the make-believe story of a successful HLG.
There could be much less enjoyable pastimes than enjoying the sun set over the horizon in this pretty city, so I should stop complaining.
And I would, if it was not for the head-splitting conundrum that the theory poses for me, that of the highly successful, palace building Mr Habtoor is giving his blessing to this continuous charade.

There could be, of course, at least two other explanations for the Habtoors en masse to give their blessing for this negligent (mis)use of construction plant, either the client is paying market rates for them doing nothing or they are not real cranes at all, just very hardy, cardboard-made props that have lasted the last year-or-so of this playhouse of false advertising.

If either of these is the case, Mr Habtoor outplayed me there with his cunning business skills, yet again.

 

















Today’s sunset and Two full pictures of the site in question taken a month apart in March and April 2014

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