Der Besuch der Alten Dame

There is a radio show about keeping cars in good repair that I listen to for the opening joke by Click or Clack (I can't remember which one tells the jokes and which one just laughs). They told the story of a man who saw another, very elderly man, wearing a tie that indicated that they had gone to the same grammar school, so the first man approached the elderly man.

'Did you go to Richard Cœur de Lion grammar school?' he asked.

'Yes, I did,' answered the elderly man.

'So did I,' said the first man, 'when were you there?'

'I was a student there back in the '60s', answered the elderly man.

'That's amazing,' said the first man, 'I was there back in the '60s.'

'Oh,' said the elderly man, 'were you one of the teachers?'

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I mention this because I met a woman my age here in Dubai about six years ago. One of the problems with the UAE is that much of the world believes that the streets are paved with gold and are convinced that the constabulary will not object to people poking potholes in the sheikh's highway.

These people come to the UAE, take out a business license, hire a bunch of people, and discover that the business doesn't earn enough money to pay them. The UAE law states that employers must pay for the employees' visas and round trip airfare, and so, having quit her job to come to Dubai, after about six months, she was laid off and sent back to her country where she no longer had a job.

Six years later, she got a job in another Gulf country and said she wanted to visit Dubai and see the Burj Khalifa, and I found that, though we're the same age, when she looked at me she saw her father, rather like the two men in the Click and Clack story, both of whom saw a much older man.

So I took her see the Burj Khalifa, which was just in the nick of time, because China is planning to put up a taller building before then end of next year, but when we went in October, the Burj Khalifa was still the world's tallest building.

I found it strange that the taxi dropped us at Dubai Mall, and, when we walked over to the Burj, there was no entrance.

I didn't know when we got there, but the entrance for non-VIPs is from the basement of Dubai Mall. After queuing for an hour, one gets taken on the fastest lift I've ever been on to the 124th floor where there is no place to sit (and the lady with me has a hard time standing for very long) so we stayed a short time and went back down. But at least we can now say we were in the tallest building in the world.