Dubai: 1st Impressions

Riding in a cab out of the airport, it feels as if I am in American suburbia. Through the tinted windows the sun has a California glow. The low-rise architecture either side of the higway is non-descript:an one of the yellow-grey concrete cubes could easily house a Toys R Us or Denny's.
Further along the street as I passed an intersection, however, I notice the one ey difference that sets it apart from Palo Alto or Mountain View: the labourers standing in the heat are not Mexicans but Pakistanis. Welcome to Little Pakistan.
The highways are immaculate and the flyovers soar like concrete dragons, their wings outspread, but despite this mighty infrastructure it is hard to discern a heart to the city: where do all these roads actually go? I am left a little disorientated.
My hotel (visit # 1), the grandly though nonsensically named Grand Swiss Bellhotel, is in a non-descript, perhaps unfinished part of town where the traffic rolls by at all hours. The parking is Indian-style: you stop wherever your car will fit in the strip between the uildings and the street. The situation here is an improvement from Delhi, however: the drivers can actually drive (more or less) and it doesn't smell overwhelmingly of wee.
The hotel staff, with one exception, are all from the Subcontinent and, contrary to what Trip Advisor might say, there wasn't the slightest whiff of curry in the lobby. The rooms are smartly, if uninspiringly, decorated and immaculately maintained. A boy comes to the door dressed in salwar kamiz and, for a brief instant, I am back in Lahore.
When I finally drive downtown, I recall the urban superscapes of Hollywood: it's a set for Gotham City or a Star Wars spacecraft chase. For a wile I couldn't even see the Burj Khalifa, but then there it was to the left hand side, forcing me to crane my neck for just a glimpse of its upper floors. Passing by again later the same evening, this sky-touching building was floodlit and the grace of the design became apparent: it is an elongated Chrysler building for the 21st century.
As I mentioned previously, the standard of driving is superior to that in many other places, but that's not to say it's anyway near exemplary. Passing a crossing I spy a fellow motorist driving with one hand holding her morning's coffee and the other clutching a mobile phone to her ear. The horns are blaring,the traffic is backing up, and the woman is blissfully unaware of the chaos.