Lunch skyscraper fake8/9/2023 ![]() ![]() Why the 8th? Together with writer of Cornish romance novels Liz Fenwick, I'm joining moderator Lara Matossian for a 'Literary Lunch' event at DWTC. And the kitchen still whisks together culinary marvels - the food here has always been stunning. The private dining rooms are still there, the old prints on the walls and lavish furnishings remain. I'll cheat - I'd probably take you for a walk around Shindaga and Ghubeiba too.Īlthough the 33rd at the Trade Centre no longer keeps a tie behind reception, it's just as swanky today as it ever was. If you were to ask me to name three key monuments to Dubai's remarkable recent history, I'd show you a tiny treadmill crane on the Bur Dubai creekside, the World Trade Centre and Port Rashid. This is where Rashid started the march to a global city. This is a place, one of only a few in Dubai, I'd argue, that truly reflects the synthesis of place and time. So it's going to be interesting (for me if nobody else) to go there on the 8th November and discuss the sense of place and its role in novels. This is a building that has always had tremendous resonance for me. Meeting the girl who was to become my wife. Coyote hitting a canyon wall.Įven the lobby reminds me of Dubai in the 1980s, staying at the Dubai Hilton* and going to bloody GITEX. If you flew a plane into this trade centre, it'd just splat on the outside - a parabellum fired at a Chobham armoured tank - before sliding down like Wile E. It's made of good old fashioned poured concrete, none of yer modern high tech skyscraper construction techniques here. Of course nowadays the Dubai World Trade Centre tower is tiny, a 33-floor dwarf nestled amongst giants. It was instantly visible from anywhere in the city. If you got lost in Dubai (a frequent occurrence for me in those days), you just used the Trade Centre tower as a landmark. It was an invitation-only members gaffe limited to CIPs (commercially important people) and they kept a tie in a drawer at reception in case you, for some inexplicable reason, had forgotten to wear your own. Back in the days when men were men, women were interested and dinosaurs roamed the earth, the Dubai World Trade Club sat atop the tallest building in the whole Middle East. ![]()
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