love in Dubai.

There's something unflinchingly shiny about uptown Dubai. Go there, and you'll find out why skyscrapers are called as skyscrapers, you'll see it's all metal and steel, glassy reflections of an endlessly blue sky and palm trees and expensive restaurants and gold plated iphones , unapologetic-ally overpriced and the side walk burns bare feet and it whispers to you of promises of money as it melts the plastic soles on your ratty hand-me-down sneakers with the frayed laces and gum sticking to the vamp of your right shoe.

Go in summer, you'll see pale legs everywhere , roasted pink by the hot sun. Male, female , old , young- the sun doesn't discriminate if you're white. it'll turn you all the pale hot pink of a over-boiled and under-seasoned chicken as you stand at the beach with your two piece bikinis and your too tight speedos and spf 50 sunscreen from banana boat. Your camera's blinking away one image after the other so later you can pick and choose which one you want to put on your Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Tumblr and caption it with something quirky. Something fun, something that shows you're enjoying life even as you're lugging your three whining children around who keep screaming "It's too hot mummy!"every five minutes and you curse the sun here, you hate it,it's too bright, too blinding , it follows you everywhere and even when it's gone you can feel it's presence in the way it hangs around the streets like a creep.

And even here, in these pictures, the sun is still here, out shining everyone in the frame. You delete the picture. But the sun is here, always lurking in the edge of the image like the pictures your children scribble for you with broken and bitten off crayons. The sun is always here. So you better smile as bright as you can . Try and outshine it, honey !

Go in winter, you'll still see pale legs everywhere. But these are different pale legs. These are the legs of seasoned tourists who know that Dubai in the summer is unbearable and Dubai in winter is balmy. They strut around the place, these legs, striking poses and crossing themselves as they see fit. They go uptown ,downtown . They ride the boat at the creeks and they run all over the bazaars . They slide down and steep rides at the water parks , slippery and smooth and they crash into the water but it is the bodies and the heads attached to the bodies that do the shrieking and reacting. Not the legs . They just run around.

Go in spring and you'll find there's no spring.

Go in fall and you'll find there's no fall.

Dubai operates in extremes-summer and winter, rich and poor, iphones and samsungs, uptown and downtown, legs and heads. Whatever lies in between is overlooked, covered up , it's vulgar, it's obscene , there's no novelty in being in the middle. Everything you need is right at the top , or right at the bottom .

Your pick.