How to use the online alarm clock
Four in the morning is when the first shift buses run. Contracting and facilities crews travel from staff accommodation to sites across the city long before the working day starts, partly because of the distance and partly because outdoor work in summer has to get as much done as possible before the heat arrives.
In the years when Ramadan falls in the warmer half of the calendar, this is also the hour of suhoor — the meal before first light — and kitchens, cafés and delivery services shift their whole night around it. In the current run of years Ramadan sits closer to the end of winter, which moves suhoor a little later, but the principle is the same: the meal has to end before the dawn call to prayer, and the exact minute changes daily.
Desert drives leave around now too, because the dunes are worth seeing at sunrise and unbearable by ten. Every minute of the four o'clock hour is listed separately below, so an alarm for 4:05 am and one for 4:40 am each have a page of their own.
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