Liquid Sunshine in Dubai

I saw the first signs of the changing season here with a small rainstorm today.  Dubai has two seasons; a really hot and humid summer and a mild summer. We were in the Ibn Batutta mall having lunch at the Lime Tree cafe (our favorite restaurant so far) when the previously impotent cloud cover opened up a bit and showered the open terrace with a refreshing light shower. The cloud cover has been a bit threatening over the past few days but this is the first official wet spot I’ve noticed. I hear that early next year to expect a few heavy downpours that will flood the poorly engineered street culverts and identify all the holes in the roofs on the uppermost floors of most buildings.

Christmas Tree

You wouldn’t think that there would be any hint of Christmas here in a country where Allah has the upper hand over God, but you couldn’t be more wrong than Daylight’s Saving Time or skin care for men.

In a country whose national pastime is mall cruising and shopping, what better way to get the tourists and 85% of the non-local population to add to the GNP during the month of December than to pander the commercial side of Christmas.

If the idea of a young girl dressed in the traditional black abaya with her head covered in a black scarf sitting on Santa’s lap seems just plain wrong you have to remember that Father Christmas is just a pagan tradition, along with the Christmas tree, gift giving, hiding your brooms and the Festivus pole. These traditions do not conflict with Islam whatsoever.

Santa in Sandyland

You won’t, however, see any Nativity scenes or shop closures on the 25th. In fact, today is just another working day like all others and after opening our presents this morning, we are going off to the Marina Mall to do more shopping. Merry Christmas from the UAE!

The Infamous Tree

Not to be outdone by the gold vending machine, the Emirates Palace has again proven that its public relations budget is well worth the allocated funds and again sparked world attention by erecting the world’s most expensive Christmas tree. The appropriately named “$11 million Christmas Tree” has been criticized by many as a grotesque display of wealth during tough economic times, but regardless what you think of the concept, the Emirates Palace has succeeded. Marketing mission accomplished.

I went to see what all the fuss was about last night and the experience was a bit of an anticlimax. Yes the tree is beautiful and very tall, well decorated with traditional ornaments and a bevy of beautifully wrapped fake presents at the base of the tree. The source of the extreme price tag is not immediately apparent until you get up close and personal with the branches of the once living pine. Well, you can’t actually get that close as security is tight and the circular railing surrounding this icon of UAE excessiveness is well beyond  two arm’s lengths and your average forty-something’s focal length. I had to use my camera’s zoom lens to get a good view of the controversial ornaments.

Mere baubles adorn the tree.

Big deal! It’s just a normal (tall) Christmas tree with a bunch of expensive necklaces hung out on the branches. It’s not like $11 million was spent on the tree. 99% of the visible value in front of your eyes will be returned to the donating jewelers store front window after Christmas. I look at the situation as a Green environmentally friendly display case, a unique and creative way to get public exposure to some beautiful original designer trinkets and another marketing hole-in-one for the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi.

Camel Beauty Contest

Nearly 20,000 camels from the UAE and other Gulf Arab countries have converged on Abu Dhabi’s western region for one of the world’s biggest camel beauty contests involving prizes worth nearly Dh35 million ($9.5 million).

The camels have been brought from various parts of the UAE as well as neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and other Gulf nations for the week-long beauty competition in the western town of Dhafra.

The contest, which started on Thursday, will stretch until next Friday and officials described it as one of the largest camel beauty pageant in the world in terms of the value of prizes and number of camels.

More than 800 camel owners from the UAE and other regional nations are participating in the event, which is sponsored by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and deputy supreme commander of the UAE armed forces. It is organised by the Culture and Heritage Authority.

Although I was not able to make it to this year’s pagent, this is something I am putting on my “to-do” list for 2011.

Flag of Portugal

Portugal has four distinct and noticeable seasons. The UAE has two; unbearable summer and normal summer.

Both countries enjoy a confusing, inefficient bureaucracy, long queues in public buildings, and government employees that aren’t paid enough to care but with enough power to ruin your day.

English is a second language in Portugal and is spoken well enough to be understood. English is an official language in the UAE and is unintelligible coming out of the mouths of the service sector population.

Food in Portuguese restaurants is unbelievably delicious, not expensive, but most of the cuisine is pretty much the same thing from restaurant to restaurant. Food in UAE restaurants is unbelievably varied, a bit expensive but disappointingly tasteless (unless you opt for the really expensive restaurants).

Portuguese drivers are really horrible and you have to drive extremely defensive on the roads. UAE drivers make the Portuguese look like driving instructors.

Flag of the United Arab Emirates

Both the Portuguese and the Emirati are the nicest people you will ever meet.

Public urinating is a national pastime in Portugal and a jailable offense in the UAE.

Taxis in both countries are not expensive. You can get across Lisbon for about $10 and Abu Dhabi for about $7.

Fresh water in Portugal comes out of the skies, is collected in lakes, streams and wells and is relatively cheap to purchase, unless you have a furo, then it is free. Fresh water in the UAE comes from the ocean, is desalinated in large factories that burn oil to process the salt water, and delivered to your faucet at about half the price it costs to make it, unless you are an Emirati where it is subsidized  further and costs even less.

When it rains in Portugal the streets drain quickly due to the spaces between the calçadas and the accurate engineering of the slope of the road down to the storm drain. When it rains in the UAE, which is about two days a year, most buildings leak and the roads flood as no one engineers rain into their construction projects.

Drive 10 minutes north of the Algarvian coastline and you are in the agricultural, green countryside. Drive 10 minutes south of the UAE coastline and you see nothing but sand and camels.

If given a choice, the Portuguese walk rather than drive. In the UAE no one walks.

Portugal enjoys freedom of the press. The UAE does too, as long as they like what you print.

Combine cruising down main street on a  Saturday night in the 1970′s with the Fourth of July, add a dash of innocent Halloween pranking and you have the 2010 UAE national day celebration.  No alcohol allowed and you have good clean fun in an amazing environment.

Islamic Disneyland

I’ve been asked several times since moving to the UAE what it is like living here. Up until now, my answers have been long drawn out explanations of the climate, the culture, the social and economic levels and the glitter, bling and gold plating added to every endeavor taken on in this tiny country.

Having moved here from quiet, green and sincere Portugal, my initial impression of this place was of shock and awe, hypnotized by the perpetual dripping of money and surreal order of everything.  Portugal and the UAE are on opposite ends of the spectrum in the comparative list of the world ‘s countries. Agricultural green has been replaced by sandy brown, rural quietness  has been replaced by the deafening sound of 24 hour a day high rise construction (an alleyway’s distance from the terrace of our apartment), and sincere is not a word in the vocabulary of 85% of the population whose motivation to be here is to make a ton of money during their three year work contract and then get back out.

Not that they have a choice, mind you. In the UAE, if you don’t have a job, you have to leave the country. There is no homeless population, no soup kitchens, no welfare or public assistance,and no unemployment. Your right to stay here beyond the 30 day tourist visa that gets stamped in your passport when you enter the country is solely dependent on getting a job. Without a job, you will be deported back to your home country. In the UAE, you can not open a bank account, get a drivers license, rent an apartment or get a residence visa without legitimate employment. Everyone here works.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining.  I am having more fun living here than I ever thought I would, but this place is unique and completely different than any other country in the world. Now that I have settled into the daily grind of living here, and “shock and awe” has been replaced with “day to day”, I have come to realize that I am living in Disneyland.

Cast Members take the Monorail to the Disneyland Hotel.

As is in Disneyland, everything you see here is artificial, clean, intentional, planned, attractive, superficial, polite, expensive, overstaffed, secure, safe, and there is much more hidden and going on behind he scenes that you are allowed to see.

In Disneyland, there is an entire underground (literally) portion of the park that houses the security, computers, kitchens, maintenance facilities, staff entrances, loading docks and pretty much anything that , if visible by the tourists, would take away from the fantasy and idyllic experience created above ground. Underground is where the aesthetically challenged employees work, the ones who applied for the job of portraying Alice and Jasmine above ground but didn’t make it through the sieve of attractiveness. You don’t ever see them but they make up the majority of the employees and are really what make the park tick.

In Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there isn’t the convenience of a separate underground facility to hide what you are not supposed to see, but they certainly try. The construction worker class of residents, whose plight and conditions have been described by some journalists (none living here as saying anything negative about the UAE never makes it to print here) as modern day slaves, are bussed in and out of town. Apparently their living conditions are upsetting to the expat community so out of sight, out of mind is the solution to that problem.

Walking down Main Street in Disneyland you can’t help notice that every building is clean, freshly painted and with flowers in the windows. The architects of Main Street left no detail ignored and created an experience of reality that really isn’t there. What you don’t realize is that these buildings are just  fronts, facades to give you the illusion they are three dimensional structures. Look behind the windows and you will find nothing but scaffolding and some support structures. Any scrap of litter casually tossed on the ground by insensitive tourists is immediately swept up by the nameless, smartly dressed but good looking (enough) trash sweeper uppers. Apparently this is the most sought after job in Disneyland as there is absolutely no interaction whatsoever with the public. The employees you do interact with, however,are always cheerful, greet you energetically, call you “Sir” or “Ma’am”, all with the intonation of a Stepford wife. This is customer service on steroids.

Cinderella's Castle

Walking down the main streets of Dubai you can’t help notice that all the newer buildings and skyscrapers are modern day works of art. The designer tile work and reflective mirrored windows give you the impression that this city must be the world’s center of prosperity and have it all. The architects left no detail ignored and created an experience of reality that really isn’t there.  What you don’t realize is that many of these buildings are just shells, mirrored on the outside to hide that fact. Look behind the windows and you will find that the majority of these commercial buildings are unoccupied, a symptom of the pre-economic crisis mentality of “build it and they will come”. These areas, built to attract tourists and western expats are litter and dirt free as countless entry level cleaners constantly sweep away any hint of disorder and chaos. You don’t interact with these people as they are probably trained to be as inconspicuous as possible. However, every store clerk, taxi driver, doorman, waitress and mid level employee you run into drips of customer service overload and always addresses you as “Sir” or “Ma’am”.

As I said, I live in Disneyland.

Blind Justice?

This is a follow up to my previous post .

A Saudi court is trying to persuade a man paralyzed in a fight to drop his demand to inflict a similar injury on his attacker by having his spinal cord surgically damaged, a judiciary spokesman said Monday.The court has determined that such a procedure could result in the attacker’s death and is appealing to the victim to accept financial compensation instead, the spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity under judiciary rules.

After consulting with Saudi hospitals, the judge ruled that such a procedure could be fatal and that blood money would be a fair deal.

Rights group Amnesty International has urged Saudi authorities not to deliberately paralyze the attacker, saying that doing so would constitute torture. Saudi Arabia enforces strict Islamic law and occasionally doles out punishments based on the ancient legal code of an eye-for-an-eye.

According to Amnesty, convicts have had teeth pulled by dentists in retribution for knocking people’s teeth out in fights and others have been sentenced to be blinded after causing people to go blind.

You Are Here

Stating the Obvious at the Dubai Mall. Of course you are here, or you wouldn’t be reading the sign.

I had a request to occasionally pontificate on the food scene here in the UAE and thought it an excellent idea. What better way to start this series but to visit the local Carrefour supermarket and see what is available for those lucky enough to have time outside of work to actually prepare their own meals.

Coincidentally, my wife B just joined me here in Abu Dhabi and today I took her on a mini tour of the city.  I say “mini” because we thought we’d be healthy and walk the city but heat and humidity quickly saw us dashing to the air conditioned sanctuary of the Marina Mall via air conditioned taxi and to the multiple football field sized supermarket on the basement level. Before she arrived, I only ventured into Carrefour to purchase a top-up card for my mobile phone, as the thought of actually purchasing individual ingredients and cooking a meal myself is as appealing to me as watching paint dry. However, with her as my tour guide, this strange and fascinating labyrinth of culinary building blocks was actually very entertaining.

Food Galore

Everything and anything you could ever imagine putting into your stomach is here on display. In addition to all the staple foods you and I are accustomed to seeing, there are foods from many other countries for sale that I did not recognize.  I thought I knew my vegetables, but with much of the produce having been imported from neighboring Middle Eastern countries, there were many alien looking, oddly colored, round and obscene shaped produce items for sale with names I could not pronounce sitting next to the familiar and comforting tomatoes and onions I tended to gravitate toward.

B became very excited at the spice section with open buckets of multi colored powders and grains on display, for sale by weight and again with names I did not recognize. We jotted down the unfamiliar names and intend to look them up on the internet when we return to our room.

Then we realized that our amazement at the wide selection of food items was probably more a reflection of our past ten years living in Portugal where one stop shopping is an oxymoron and variety is just the name of a magazine. We became accustomed to doing without many food items as the Portuguese cuisine is, although delicious, very narrow and limited.

So take this article with a grain of salt (Carrefour has something called Lemon Salt in the spices section – never heard of that) as we are probably experiencing culture shock more than anything and I apologize for the lack of pictures for this article. The security guard in the one photo I do have came up to me immediately after I took the shot and told me no photographs allowed in the supermarket. What? Next time I’ll use the camera in my cell phone and make it look like I’m texting a message, which at any one time in the UAE, half of the population is doing anyway.