The weather has been so wonderfully cool recently that I’ve been able to switch off the air conditioning in my car for the first time in months and wind down the windows. Being able to once again view Abu Dhabi through an open car window has radically altered how I see the city.
Like a cinematic cliché where the geeky plain-Jane protagonist gets a glamorous new image, so too has the city been magically transformed in my eyes, its latent beauty now fully recognised and appreciated.
It’s as if the whole city has visited a beauty salon while her inhabitants slumbered.
The city is now beautiful almost beyond comprehension – the type of beauty that arrests all the senses. The type of beauty that takes our breath away.
As I drove around the city I also noticed that the city was scented with the fragrance of flowers.
There were battalions of blossoms in full bloom projecting their intense colours in all directions: violent pinks and unearthly purples competing furiously for the attention of each passer-by – how had I not noticed these before?
The colour contrast between the flowers and the turquoise of the Arabian Gulf was stark, but Abu Dhabi somehow managed to pull it off. She made the look work.
Now that I had removed the veil of my tinted window, the number of tree species also seemed more numerous. According to one source, the UAE is home to 37 species of date palm alone.
The trees lined the streets in near perfect symmetry, a testimony to the care and attention lavished on them. Many had been artfully pruned, and now sported perfectly styled foliage, squares, circles and rhomboids all casting beautiful shadows. Everywhere there was green.
As I waited at the traffic lights, I could hear the waves beating a gentle rhythm on the shore. Turquoise sea and golden sand combined as if locked in some eternal jewellery making process.
Casting a glance skywards, I could see that the sun had now begun her final descent.
This huge orange globe took one last reassuring peek at herself in the Gulf’s reflective surface before vanishing for the night. This was the only time I can ever remember willing the traffic lights to stay red for just a little longer.
Like an exotic migratory bird the cool breeze has returned, and its reappearance heralds major social changes.
The drop in temperature will mean that hitherto abandoned outdoor activities will once again be resumed.
The parks will teem with alfresco diners, the beaches will bustle with the would-be bronze, and those given to the unhealthy pleasures of shisha will once again puff in the open air.
The UAE is a great place to live all year around, but the wintertime is sublime. It was a long lonely summer, but now the cool has arrived.
Now is the time for winding down the window, now is the time to more fully appreciate the surrounding beauty. Now is the winter of our sweet content.
Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University and author of Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States
Twitter: @DrJustinThomas