How long until 5:00 pm?

Five in the afternoon is the evening peak. The metro platforms at the business districts fill, the toll gantries record their heaviest flow of the day, and the crossings between Dubai and Sharjah can add forty minutes to a twenty-minute journey.

For part of the year it is also nearly sunset. In December and January the sun goes down a little before six, so the sunset prayer falls at the end of this hour and the light is gone before most people have reached home.

It is the point at which clinics, service counters and customer lines stop answering, which makes a countdown to five o'clock useful when there is one call that has to be made before someone else's day ends. The count always targets the next 5 pm.