This and that in Dubai

Dubai catches a lot of flak for being so over the top. In fact, a derogatory term that gets thrown around when something is way over the top is “so Dubai” as in that new building in (say) Delhi that is trying to be pretentious, fancy, and over the top is “so Dubai.” Dubai does do one thing well and that’s malls. The two biggest are the Mall of the Emirates (MOE) and the fairly new Dubai Mall. The MOE is several years old and is the one that has the ski slope. I’ve never been there skiing, but have gone to the mall quite a few times for movies, dinner, and shopping. It’s huge and quite fancy. The Dubai Mall is next to the Burg Khalifa, formally the Burj Dubai, which is the tallest building in the world at some 828 meters or 2,717 feet high. After a monetary bailout from the oil rich next door neighbor, Abu Dhabi, the tower was renamed Khalifa after the current president of the UAE – a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family. The building is made up (or will be made up of when it’s all complete) of retail, residential, and commercial space. Above the 124th floor is corporate office space. It also contains the highest mosque in the world on the 158th floor. Hmmm, I wonder if you’re Muslim and are at the observation deck and the call to prayer came, could you head on up to the 158th floor to pray???? When complete the building will hold around 25,000 people. Meanwhile, the mall is one of the biggest and has a huge aquarium inside. One wall of the aquarium makes up part of a long hallway within the mall. I must say it’s a bit surreal, but also pretty cool, to walk down the mall and look over to see several sharks, rays, and huge fish swimming by! I haven’t been to the aquarium or the Burj observation deck; however, I’ll do both before I depart Dubai. I’m waiting on someone to come to visit to give me a reason. There is also an ice skating rink in the mall which I have been to. One thing about both malls that I find “so Dubai” is that the mall contains all kinds of shops for everyone. There are shops that cater to the skate boarding crowd near a Nike or Adidas store, which is near a home furnishing store, which is near a toy store, which is near a Rolex store, which is not too far from a Tiffany’s or Versace store. At the center of the mall is a food court with all the American chains like Mickey D’s, KFC, Subway, and a Chili’s or Fridays. When a Taco Bell opened up in the Dubai Mall last year lines where unbelievably long and that’s all people could talk about! Between the Dubai Mall and the Burj is an awesome water display that has an amazing fountain show that draws huge crowds.

Unfortunately, two of these attractions have had some problems. The Burj ( which means tower in Arabic) has the third highest observation deck in the world at the 124th floor, but it is the highest OUTDOOR observation deck (of course….so Dubai!). That’s pretty good but not that much higher than other skyscrapers that the Burj surpassed to become the highest. The building itself is around 160 floors so no one quite knows why the observation deck is so low – so to speak. To get to the observation deck it’s quite expensive…about $30 but twice that if you want to avoid the lines and go VIP style (so Dubai!). I haven’t been yet but will go at some point and hope the elevator doesn’t get stuck as it did not long ago. That story also made world news headlines! Apparently, the elevator free fell a short distance and was then stuck between floors for about an hour or so. On another note, when the Burj officially opened in January, they put on an amazing fireworks show with the fireworks being shot up about and off the sides of the Burj. Since the school is located a few miles away, several of us watched the show from the highest roof of the campus where we had an amazingly clear view. It was quite impressive and not as “so Dubai” as I was expecting. The city is in a recession after all!

Mall emptied as Dubai Aquarium starts to leak

Visitors to the Dubai Aquarium can pay to swim in its shark-infested waters, but shoppers in the Gulf state almost had the chance for free when the attraction sprang a leak. A crack developed in the vast glass tank, which houses 33,000 fish including 400 sharks and stingrays swimming in 10 million litres of water. The aquarium is one of the world’s largest and the centrepiece attraction at the Dubai Mall.
“The crack was pretty big. They stopped the water getting out quickly but a lot of the nearby shops on the ground floor got water damage. I don’t think any of the fish got out. We didn’t have sharks in the mall, luckily,” said an assistant in one of the nearby shops. The incident is the latest mishap to befall one of Dubai’s flagship projects. Earlier this month, the observation deck of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, was closed to the public when a lift broke in the 828m tower. Visitors were left stranded in the lift shaft for 45 minutes before begin rescued. About 100 shops in the mall adjacent to the aquarium were evacuated as emergency services and a maintenance team moved to stem the crack in the 75-centimetre-thick glass. The full extent of the damage is still not known.
In a statement, the mall stressed that its maintenance team had immediately fixed a leak in one of the tank’s panel joints. The area around the aquarium remained closed yesterday afternoon, with security guards claiming that routine maintenance was going on. “The leakage did not impact the aquarium environment or the safety of the aquatic animals,” said a spokesman for the mall. “The Dubai Aquarium works with international experts in aquarium management and upholds the highest safety standards.” The aquarium has been a huge draw with locals and tourists since the Dubai Mall opened last year. The attraction boasts the world’s largest acrylic viewing panel at 272 square metres. Visitors can even pay to scuba dive in the tank.
The Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa are both managed by Emaar Properties and form the core of a $20 billion (£13 billion) development to establish a new modern centre for the Gulf state. Dubai’s once-booming real estate market collapsed last year with up to 50 per cent wiped off property values in the last 12 months. The city is also mired in a deep financial crisis. Dubai World, a major state-owned conglomerate, rocked international markets in November when it admitted it would be unable to repay $26 billion of debts. Despite these difficulties, Emaar is pressing ahead with development of the Burj Khalifa. A luxury hotel and apartments designed by Italian fashion giant Giorgio Armani is scheduled to open in March. The new owners of the building’s exclusive residences will continue moving in throughout this year.


Dubai kiss court case highlights culture clash
By Daniela Deane for CNN
March 18, 2010 -- Updated 1135 GMT (1935 HKT)

An Emirati man riding a camel passes by foreigners sunbathing on a beach in Dubai last spring.

London, England (CNN) -- The locals wear long, all-covering robes. They pray five times a day in one of the city's many mosques. Each year, they celebrate Ramadan, fasting from dawn to dusk. Many expatriates, instead, love to hang out at the beach, often in skimpy bathing suits making the most of the year-round sunshine. They go to beach-side cafes to drink and eat with friends, enjoying the tax-free lifestyle of the sunny sheikdom-by-the-sea. Only rub is expatriates overwhelmingly outnumber locals -- by more than eight to one. Welcome to Dubai, the tiny, sun-drenched, desert sheikdom where a whopping 85 percent of the population hail from somewhere else, demographics unheard of anywhere else in the world. And although the unusual co-existence is largely peaceful, friction can bubble up, like in the recent case of a British couple facing up to a month in jail for kissing in public.
The couple, a British man living and working in Dubai, and a British female tourist visiting the Persian Gulf city-state, were arrested in November accused of kissing and touching each other intimately in public -- violations of law against public indecency -- and consuming alcohol. The couple have been granted bail pending appeal. A hearing is scheduled for April 4. Dubai's foreign population has soared in recent years as expatriates, courted by the country, flocked to the booming emirate to work.

"It's one of the countries in the world which has had the most rapid structural transformation we've ever seen for an economy," said Nasser Saidi, chief economist of the Dubai International Financial Centre Authority. "If you look at it like that, you start to understand the dynamics of the economy, why you need to attract a vast population from across the world." The population changes have challenged the now vastly outnumbered Emiratis, though, raising concerns among the local population that the breakneck modernization of the sheikdom threatens their deeply conservative social and religious identity. The case is the third of its kind involving Britons in under two years. Expats who live in the emirate say authorities seem to be increasingly sensitive to such culture clashes. "Expats need to know that no matter how modern and open-minded this country is, it's an Islamic country," said Heike Moeckel, a cultural consultant at Embrace Arabia, an Abu Dhabi-based, Emirati-owned company providing cultural training to expats and Emiratis alike. Moeckel said "the amount of ignorance" by expats to Islamic traditions was the "biggest obstacle" in her work. She said there were beaches in Dubai where a local Emirati woman would not dare bring her children because of the dress code and behavior there, considered "completely inappropriate" by local people. The British couple at the center of the current case were dining with friends at Bob's Easy Diner, one of a stretch of cafes on a popular strip behind the city's Jumeirah Beach, when an Emirati woman with her family reported their behavior to police.
"It's very easy to make an economy out of different kinds of people with different religious backgrounds and nationalities," Shahidul Haque, regional representative for the Middle East for the International Organization for Migration, told CNN. "But it's often very difficult to develop a social fabric with the same populations."
"That's a huge challenge for any country," Haque said, adding that incidents like the couple kissing "happen for social and economic reasons," rather because of religious differences.

The economy of Dubai, a once tiny pearling village with limited natural resources, was built by expatriate labor. And the high number of expats needs to be maintained to ensure growth, experts say. Oil sales account for less than five percent of Dubai's economy now. The majority of its income comes from service industries, retail, trade and tourism. Asked if the Dubai economy could continue to grow without its large expat population, chief economist Saidi replied no. "It's clear they need them," he said. Saidi said that although the population of the emirate is very young and growing fast, it will take "a couple of generations to build up the skills needed." Until such point, Dubai continues to need -- and court -- its foreign workers, despite culture clashes like the one with the British couple.
"The local labor market cannot provide" what is needed, Haque said. "You either have to depend on foreign labor, or reduce the economy."

"And no country wants to shrink their economy."