On a beautiful afternoon last week, I had a momentary bout of fitness, so I loaded my inflatable stand-up paddle-board into the car and drove to a spot along the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Street where there was a launch spot into the mangroves. But much to my surprise, the spot was now a construction site. Probably I could have manoeuvred past the tractors and plopped the board into the water, but that seemed complicated.
Unwilling to let go of my plan, I parked near the Eastern Mangroves hotel and rented a stand-up paddle-board from one of the outlets in the back of the hotel along the water. It felt a little silly to pay for a board when I had one in the car, but I didn’t want to get into a wrangle about whether or not it would be right for me to launch my own board, so I paid my money and paddled away. And once I got away from the sound of the grinding tractors, it was lovely on the water, complete with sightings of flamingoes and a few cormorants.
As sometimes happens, one exercising moment can lead to another, which explains why, a few days later, I rode my bike to Saadiyat Beach for a long morning walk. I walked 3,000 steps in one direction, according to the step-counting app on my phone, but then I had to stop. I wasn’t exhausted, but there was a wall in my way: a large rusting wall, jutting into the Gulf. Some of the rust was the same shade as the dunes in Liwa, and the contrast between the oxidising wall and the turquoise water was unexpectedly beautiful, although I am not sure that aesthetics explains the wall’s existence. On the other side of the wall rose the shells of new apartment buildings, and cranes dipped and pulled, cables swaying from their tips like bedraggled palm fronds. I turned to walk in the other direction, counting steps and construction sites as I went.
Abu Dhabi seems to be preparing for a huge influx of residents, as near as I can tell: there is new housing going up all over Saadiyat and onto the flat beaches of Yas. I can’t kite-surf (I imagine my arms would pop out of their sockets like the arms of Lego mini-figures), but I love watching the sails of the kite-surfers swooping like giant dragonflies as the surfers skim towards the horizon. Now “kite beach” is dotted with tractors and big billboards have gone up announcing another luxury housing development. The views will be spectacular, I am sure, although there won’t be any kite-surfers to watch.
Or maybe somewhere along the Yas shoreline there will be a specific “kite surfing zone” complete with an admissions fee and a reservation system, so that residents of the new houses can enjoy the beauty of the brightly coloured kites against the gleaming water.
The American singer Joni Mitchell has a song that's been playing on a loop in my head, getting louder every time my desire for open space collides with urban development. "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot," she sings in her distinctive warble. "They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum, charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em…" The chorus of the song offers a caution: "you don't know what you've got till it's gone."
How do we manage that balance between our desire to tame open spaces and the necessity of letting open spaces remain open? In the United States this question surfaces every summer, as herds of tourists clot the roads in all the national parks in order to photograph “the great outdoors”. Of course, if the current administration in the US has its way, the national parks will become sites corporate development and the mining industry: no parks, no wilderness, no traffic. Problem solved. How will Abu Dhabi balance development with preserving open space? I hope we're not headed for a mangrove museum.
Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs
Engine: 2-litre or 3-litre 4Motion all-wheel-drive Power: 250Nm (2-litre); 340 (3-litre) Torque: 450Nm Transmission: 8-speed automatic Starting price: From Dh212,000 On sale: Now
Getting there
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Tbilisi from Dh1,025 return including taxes
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Zimbabwe v UAE, ODI series
All matches at the Harare Sports Club:
1st ODI, Wednesday, April 10
2nd ODI, Friday, April 12
3rd ODI, Sunday, April 14
4th ODI, Tuesday, April 16
UAE squad: Mohammed Naveed (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Shaiman Anwar, Mohammed Usman, CP Rizwan, Chirag Suri, Mohammed Boota, Ghulam Shabber, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Amir Hayat, Zahoor Khan, Qadeer Ahmed
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Day 2, stumps
Pakistan 482
Australia 30/0 (13 ov)
Australia trail by 452 runs with 10 wickets remaining in the innings
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
HWJN
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Key changes
Commission caps
For life insurance products with a savings component, Peter Hodgins of Clyde & Co said different caps apply to the saving and protection elements:
• For the saving component, a cap of 4.5 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 90 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• On the protection component, there is a cap of 10 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 160 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• Indemnity commission, the amount of commission that can be advanced to a product salesperson, can be 50 per cent of the annualised premium for the first year or 50 per cent of the total commissions on the policy calculated.
• The remaining commission after deduction of the indemnity commission is paid equally over the premium payment term.
• For pure protection products, which only offer a life insurance component, the maximum commission will be 10 per cent of the annualised premium multiplied by the length of the policy in years.
Disclosure
Customers must now be provided with a full illustration of the product they are buying to ensure they understand the potential returns on savings products as well as the effects of any charges. There is also a “free-look” period of 30 days, where insurers must provide a full refund if the buyer wishes to cancel the policy.
“The illustration should provide for at least two scenarios to illustrate the performance of the product,” said Mr Hodgins. “All illustrations are required to be signed by the customer.”
Another illustration must outline surrender charges to ensure they understand the costs of exiting a fixed-term product early.
Illustrations must also be kept updatedand insurers must provide information on the top five investment funds available annually, including at least five years' performance data.
“This may be segregated based on the risk appetite of the customer (in which case, the top five funds for each segment must be provided),” said Mr Hodgins.
Product providers must also disclose the ratio of protection benefit to savings benefits. If a protection benefit ratio is less than 10 per cent "the product must carry a warning stating that it has limited or no protection benefit" Mr Hodgins added.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
