What I love the most about Dubai is the truly fascinating weather we have here. A year in Dubai is basically broken down into 338 days of sunshine, 10 days of cloudy/overcast skies, 5 days of rain, and 12 days of fog. So naturally today had to be a fog day.

I think that when the fog rolls in, the density of a driver's brain changes somewhat. Most of the people driving on the roads this morning were staying in their lanes, driving at a slow speed, and doing furious shoulder checks before changing lanes. But this morning I witnessed a rather strange fog-induced driving phenomenon: driving with your hazard lights on.

Now if you don't know what your hazard lights are, just hit the little button with a red triangle on it next time you're in the car (it's the one right next to the 'Wife Eject' button). Generally, hazard lights are used when your car has stalled on the road somewhere, or you've pulled over into the service lane because you've discovered halfway through your trip to Abu Dhabi that the cat has once again snuck into your car's engine. But in Dubai, hazard lights can be used for many other purposes. They let you pull into a parking space and not purchase a ticket because "I am only going for 5 minutes and the attendant will see my lights and not give me a ticket". You can double-park behind someone's car and put your hazard lights on because "I am only going into the bank for 5 minutes". But today almost every second car that was driving on the roads had their hazard lights on. Now I'm guessing that people are thinking "Oh what a smart person I am - people will see my hazard lights and they will be careful when driving". Uh - nooo. If your hazards are on, how the hell are you going to indicate when you want to swap lanes? Ah - I don't have to indicate...since both my indicators are on, you can guess which lane I'm going to swerve into! I think this is what driving in purgatory is like - three lanes of traffic with the car hazards on because people can't decide if they want to drive into heaven or hell.

So here's a couple of fog-driving tips for you all:

• Your headlights (or high beams) are not the same as fog lights, so avoid blinding the person in front of you who is trying just as hard as you to navigate. You may as well stick your brand new Nokia out the window and navigate with that.
• Radars still work when it's foggy, so fat chance that you are going to get away with driving at 150kmph.
• For the love of god, don't take photos of the fog when driving. If you really must act like a bloody tourist even after living here for 8 years, please pull over to the side of the road before whipping out your camera.

Drive safe people!

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