Moving on and again

A good friend of the Weasel's left Dubai today, and thinking of the good times that had been shared the Weasel became aware that he had little or no record of many of them.

Those times are of course all in the collective memory, but the Weasel does like to savour a good tale, and like a fine wine they are sometimes best laid down for a while before being brought out, dusted off, decanted, garnished as necessary and recounted over a bottle or two.

Fortunately his leaving friend has his own far superior blog and this has driven the Weasel to resolve to maintain this, albeit flawed, record better. On a sadder note, the Weasel is also witnessing a close relative start the slide to old age memory loss, distressing, and something that maybe these accounts scribbled late at night can in some way offset.

One of the oddities of Dubai is that people are always leaving, and not just moving to the next town but literally thousands of miles away, this means that local legend even within small circles only generally lives as long as the last resident of that group remains in Dubai.

The only experience that comes close to this city of temporary residents harks back to the Weasel's youth and a period spent as a cog in the military wheel. There, on constantly rotating postings you were never more than a couple of years from saying goodbye to everyone and meanwhile had to farewell all those you met on day one as they in turn left.

It's an exhausting process and can lead to insulation and shallow relationships, something immediately apparent in the the long term crowd in Dubai when the Weasel first arrived. All friends that were made at that period were themselves newcomers, while this could have been ageism, it was also a shared experience thing and possibly a desire on the part of the old timers to avoid the emotional roller coaster.

In the last few years however the Weasel has seen this gradually change, prior to 2000 Dubai seemed to have two types of resident, those who came for 2 years or those who had been here for 25 years, the difference is now that the churn rate has reduced, the Weasel still has many of the friends that were made on day one and strangely many are still in Dubai, some even left and came back.

This in someway is great but makes their leaving harder when it does come (as it will to all).

Have a good one mate, this furry friend wishes you all the best, we will see you soon.