My favorite street signs

By no means is this a comprehensive list. I certainly don't have photos of all my favorite street signs. I deeply regret not taking a picture of the signs along the highway in Syria that said, in English, "Please Make Light Speed" (which is actually a roughly correct, if overly literal, translation from the Arabic for "Reduce Speed").

In Syria, we also used to giggle at the many, many different English spellings of Syrian towns and villages on directional signs. My favorite was Homs (spelled properly like so). You could just picture the highway sign assembly guy, puzzling over the letters he'd received: H O M S. And then, because Arabic isn't as picky about vowels as English, sounding out some possibilities: "Homs...Hmos..." We saw HMOS on the signs plenty often.

Very close to my home here in Sharjah, we have this gem, which is juuuust on the quaint side of offensive.

Straight-up offensive is the sign on Airport Road directing drivers to (something like) "Home for Old Folks." Hahahahahahahaha.

My most recent favorite is this one, at a construction area here on campus:

Ahh, "Labor At Work." Doesn't it just make you smile? Just as with HMOS, I love to imagine the thinking behind this. Perhaps they meant "Laborer" at work but the -er didn't come through strongly enough over the phone, or between accents, or however the instructions were delivered. And why didn't they just say "Men At Work"? I know you can't do that in the US anymore, but it's certainly true about construction sites in this country. In any case, it's a very stilted phrasing. Or is it a command? "Labor at work!!!" It's so open to interpretation. I love it.