Old Abu Dhabi

All the recent talk about the old Dubai made me reminisce about the old Abu-Dhabi. When I do visit I usually see new buildings and flats everywhere in place of my old hangouts. It used to be piles of sand, rubble and dirt; perfect for barefooted football. The hours I spent playing footy from 7arah to 7arah(7arah=block).

Ofcourse when compared to Dubai it seems that nothing has changed but believe me it has, I remember instead of Abu Dhabi Mall there was Adma-Opco (the company, now on the corniche) which had loads of sporting facilities at the time. My Thursdays (weekends) would be something like:

Swim & Windsurf at 2pm
Tennis 4-6pm
Football 6:30-8pm
Swim and relax till 9pm

Somewhere in between I’ll grab something to eat. I used to get home and be in bed by 10pm all tired. Now instead of all those sport facilities we have Abu-Dhabi mall where you have kids as young as 11 smoking and chasing after girls, who go out all dressed to kill but apparently through no fault of their own get harassed by these guys. Ahh how things have changed, I think now they call it a more civilized way of living.

The only place you can go for free public swimming on an island now is in Ras-al akhathr and even that place probably won’t last before they do something with it (shame because its lovely place). The corniche also is different; I actually like what they’ve done. I dug some pics that I had. If you into the background you can see the difference.

I suppose in a way its good for Abu Dhabi that things are progressing but maybe they could learn from Dubai and not end up turning it in to another Ibiza kind of place. I think kids and teenagers could do with a few affordable sport/leisure centers (apart from walking around the malls).