A visitor from Downunder

A colleague from Frankfurt is just visiting me on a stop-over on his way home from a Paris Hilton-like wedding celebration in Australia. The photo on the left was taken just outside one of the three office areas Asda'a Burson-Marsteller occupies here (see here for a picture showing the building).

I'm sure Jo loves taxi drivers and the traffic here in Dubai!

Stable things in the downturn

Today, there is a comment in The National by Sheikh Khalifa, President of the UAE, saying the financial crisis is under control. And, struggling to wake up this morning, I heard on BBC World News that a high-ranking official in the US argues the crisis there could be over by the end of the year if banks started lending again. Of course it takes some searching to discover such voices of cautious optimism - not many see "green shoots". In fact, there's been a UK minister who was only recently being criticized for using that expression.

But indeed there are sectors that defy the current downturn - and I'm not merely speaking of the likes of Air Arabia, apparently the first company to introduce low-cost carrier services in the Middle East modelled after European examples (did I mention I'm doing PR for them?). No, I'm speaking of a sector that may not be high up on the list of unprompted answers about 'industries you know' in a survey of public opinion: religious travel.

The head of a religious-travel trade group yesterday said that the UAE could build tourism despite the current global challenges by catering to pilgrims during the haj - the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which every Muslim who is financially able to do so is required to undertake at least once in his life (the haj is, as you may know, one of the five pillars of islam). Apparently, the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia brings in US 1.8billion per year, with experts arguing that "religious tourism is recognised as one of the most resilient markets in the industry".

Good to know there are stable things around. Now, how can we transfer this insight to Europe?

Winnenden's 15

What shocked you in Germany, is being followed with sadness and shock here as well, at least if you ckeck the media agenda. No matter which news channel I tuned into yesterday evening Dubai time - CNN, BBC World News, Al Jazeera - the story of the shooting at the school in South-West Germany was everywhere, with interpreters struggling with the local dialect of the spokespeople at last evening's press conference and CNN simply filming German news station n-tv's live coverage as they had nobody on the ground themselves. Today, the National carries a piece on the frontpage, see here.

The paper observes: "Such shootings are rare in Germany, where gun laws are tight by comparison with many western countries, and the outbreak of such violence in this prosperous, sedate part of the country stunned the nation."

In everyday conversation, this was only shortly a topic yesterday when the news broke. And I have to say I'm also not too surprised by this new incident; somehow, even though it's every time a tragedy in its own right, you "get used to it" in a way. This is the second similar event I remember in Germany after Erfurt in 2002. Not to speak of others around the globe. A paper now even published a list of school-related shootings worldwide. Violence is simply there, any time you use any form of mass media there are reports, and it's not a question of if you like or accept it. Let's see what they identify as reasons this time - I'm sure somebody will find computer games in the teenager's home and blame them, as it was done almost seven years ago in Erfurt. Which sounded like too simple an answer for me even then.

The only thing that is evident here is that we can't simply look at the US and shake our heads at the tragedies happening over there, raising our eyebrows in disbelief at the groups promoting free access to guns and the weapons people keep at home. While these are things worthwhile to discuss, the true reasons for such horrible events seem to lie deeper, as they happen in one form or the other in any society. The horror movies, it seems, can come to anybody's town.

Sadly, it looks like there will always be people who violently interfere with other people's lives. No matter where you go, no matter how much we think of our civilization.

Happy Birthday, Mohammed!

No, of course not the prophet. The prophet Mohammed's birthday was celebrated last Saturday. Today's the birthday of one of the guys in the room I work in. You get a small impression from the pictures. And yes, the cake WAS good! Apart from the icing on top. Too sweet for my liking. But hey, I'm not complaining! I bought it with the guy behind the birthday kid and the Lady in red in the other picture, both also working in the same room. Now, where did everyone go? I thought we go for a drink now! Hm. We'll come back to that.

King of the desert

Stunning. That's probably the best word to describe the desert. The slightly reddish, incredibly fine and soft sand, harmonious ripples drawn in a perfect pattern by the scalding winds of the desert, scattered patches of scarce plant life, the gentle dunes, the hazy horizon and the perfect blue sky above it all really are amazing.

IF you can get back into an air-conditioned 4wd vehicle anytime you want, that is. Because even now, in early spring, the sun burns down relentlessly (the skin on my arm is still peeling), the sand gets too hot to bear without closed shoes around midday, and after a few moments outside, you have sand anywhere - in your clothes, hair, ears, mouth. Good the camera did not conk out.

So it's little surprise that local people mostly only drive into the desert for some dune-bashing - which means you drive your car at high speeds up and down and around the sand dunes, avoiding the soft spots you might easily get stuck in and jumping over dune tips, including stomach-churning dips down into surprisingly deep valleys of sand. Dune-bashing is quite a popular pastime around here, I'm told - and something I also did last weekend as part of a desert trip.

A group of about twenty people in four cars left Dubai in the early morning to head to the Southwest (I think), passing the huge Chinese Dragon market, the far-out International Village, some gas stations and branches of banks in the middle of nowhere, as well as the only Dubai inland oil field (which you can't visit, I learned with some regret). And after letting out some air from the tires for better traction, we hit the desert at top speeds. While I took the dune-bashing mostly fine, two women quickly engaged in a screaming match which the one from Canada only won because the French girl had to jump out of the car and look very closely at the sand's intricate patterns. Several times. I felt sorry for her, because she clearly felt bad that the whole car had to stop just because of her - which didn't bother me at all, I used the stops for walking around and just sit or lie in the sand, or jumping down the sides of dunes, all the while avoiding the occasional "camel chocolate" (yes, it is what you think) on the ground.

During one stop at a camel farm (see picture) I got really close to these strange animals - and was surprised to feel how horrent and scrubby their fur is. But I didn't stay too long touching them, as I eyed their huge yellow teeth with some suspicion and felt better watching the camels from a few meters away. We later had lunch in the shadow of a huge rock, during which I managed not to spill any food over myself even though there was an abundance of red salad sauce and other highly spillable stuff. After a short drive into a mountainous area, I didn't regret to get back on normal streets again, as the dune-bashing is fun for maybe an hour but then gets somewhat repetitive, especially as the driver slowed down remarkably out of consideration for the Canadian-French Scream Team.

Nonetheless, the day was great - to see and to be in the desert is a unique experience nobody should miss out.

City of Accidents

No, I'm not speaking merely about road accidents here. Even though that would be good for at least a two-hundred pages annual report, if you ask me.

Traffic here tends to be crazy, with cars changing lanes without any indication occasionally, cyclists going smaller streets the wrong way, people just popping up out of nowhere and crossing the street in the firm believe God will protect them (and if not, then it had been written anyway), taxis pushing and honking out of habit, drivers taking advantage of any tiny space you give them to squeeze in in front of you. And of course there's always construction work going on, sometimes changing a seemingly familiar route over night.

In fact, traffic, and road accidents, are considered to be one of the major problems here, maybe along with waste in some desert or beach areas and use of natural resources. According to a recent newspaper report, Dubai has one of the highest energy consumptions in the world - consuming on average 20,000 kilowatt hours of power per year per person and 130 gallons (1 gallon = about 4.56 liters) of water every day - with 70 percent of the fresh water supply provided through costly and energy-consuming desalination of sea water.

But apparently, the traffic situation has become much better with police cracking down on traffic offenders (by the way, try to avoid being handed a red copy of a form from policemen in case you are involved in an accident - because this means you are identified as the guilty party which means trouble, especially, as one expat claims, foreigners can't expect to be treated with leniency). There are many speed controls and people fail driving tests for only going slightly faster than allowed on a given road (which might also be an excuse to make money on the part of some driving schools - I hear some people failed the test 10 times and more, with government now having introduced a law according to which you may appeal if you fail your driving test two or three times). A major problem only a few years ago seem to have been nationals in fast cars zooming in and out of the traffic on Dubai's six-lane-motorways, apparently mistaking the street for kind of a hyperrealistic version of a computer racing game. Unsurprising, nationals until recently were involved in pro-rata more accidents than their absolute numbers in Dubai would suggest, but it's improving. And then there's the metro system under development at present, which is intended to be finished by September this year, which will eventually transport tens of thousands of people daily, even though nobody really knows if the deadline can be met.

Anyway, what I really wanted to write about is that many people come to Dubai by accident. Many do not make the intentional decision at some point to come here. At a party last weekend in a formidable white expat villa with a view on the Burj Dubai, large walled garden including swimming pool, I spoke to a manager from London who simply came because the package his company offered was too good to resist - and he finds he likes it here, as there is much less tax and much less crime than in his home city of almost 30 years. Then there was the language teacher from New York, who left her beloved Big Apple to be at least a bit closer to her boyfriend, who works for the US government in Iraq. Or there's the German girl who had lived with her soon-to-be Scottish husband in Berlin for some time, but who found they had to live in a place where both can find the jobs they want. Another German, working for a UK university in Dubai, just ended up in Dubai after several years in Cairo and still feels ambigious about her new home. And there's the French consultant working in Dubai's World Trade Center - in the early 80s the only high-rise building in Dubai - who just felt like a change for a couple of years. Similarly, many of the services staff such as taxi drivers or hotel employees come from countries such as India or Pakistan, in order to work, earn money, and hopefully go back some time and build their homes in the countries of origin.

The individual stories as well as the standards of living and future prospects differ, but one way or the other, they all came for the chances and promises of Dubai, and many live in something like a more or less permanent temporary arrangement. From what I know so far, you might find it to be a challenging task to find expats planning to stay forever. This, it seems, is not only true because some I spoke to miss aspects that make a place worthwhile for living over a long period for them, or because many are still young, being in their 20s or 30s - but apparently because whoever comes to Dubai, is always more than welcome as a guest. And stays a guest no matter for how long you settle down here. You will never be considered a local. There was, for instance, the desert safari tour guide whose parents are from Bangladesh - but he was born and raised in Dubai. Nonetheless, he weill never receive citizenship and the accompanying privileges such as the right to vote. In earlier posts, I have also already spoken about how other rules apply to expats than to Emiratees.

All this surprises me mainly for one thing: Dubai depends on people coming.

If you only count the dozens, probably hundreds of real estate development projects, spanning living spaces as well as office floors and hotels, you can only wonder who will ever fill them with life. Apparently, on The Palm, only the front appartments are sold so far, the rest ist partly still in construction, partly simply empty. In some areas, the most activity was speculation with properties, buying and selling flats for a profit. Dubai Mall, one of the biggest shopping centers around here - the biggest one is still in the US, but supposedly there are plans to build the biggest mall in Dubai soon. Now, honestly, were you surprised by that piece of information? -, still feels quite empty even with many people there, just because it is so huge and many shops are not yet sold.

So what if people stop coming - there are already rumors in some newspapers that places like Taipeh might be the next Dubai in the making - while the people who are here don't want to stay because they will never really feel at home for various reasons? Is this sustainable?

So up to now, there has been this huge growth, and if you want my personal opinion, we haven't seen the end of it yet, despite the global situation. But what will be next?

If you leave the city for a trip in the desert, like I did last weekend, you cannot help but be struck by the sheer unlikeliness of Dubai existing in the way it does. There's simply nothing but a few scattered buildings, brand-new streets complete with lighting, and seemingly endless desert once you leave the city and areas such as International City on the outskirts of Dubai behind you. Heat, sand, space. Three or four oil fields, most of them in the sea. And the people's determination to reach for the stars. That's about it.

What an accident.

Coffee and dallahs and more

Believe it or not, but I did find a nice backyard open air cafe in Dubai, where you can even relax in the shadow of a real tree. It's close to Bastakia, the old, re-built area close to Dubai Museum near the mouth of the Creek (on the map at least). And of course I had to try Arabic coffee.

From what I heard, there are two main ways of preparing Arabic coffee. One way is to use cardamom or other spices such as saffron - which you can buy at a good price in Dubai's Spice Souk, by the way, and which gives the hot beverage a golden colour. The other version is called gahwa saada (plain coffee), it is without anything added and more bitter. It's that latter version I had so far - a bit unfamiliar for Western Europeans: the coffee powder remains in the pot after brewing, so you have to wait first till it settles at the bottom before you drink. Usually, you serve coffee in small cups, only just about covering the bottom of the cup.

By the way, invitations to have a coffee or tea seems to be quite common as a social event with Emiratee people - much more than invitations to their homes, with an invitation usually meaning that your contact person is at least entertaining the idea there might be a friendship in the making with you. Anyway, it would be quite rude to say 'no' without an important reason - of course only after politely declining the offer first, as only if the invitation is repeated, you can be sure it is sincere and not merely made out of politeness.

This, of course, is not necessarily the case with other people from other nationalities - which, as I mentioned earlier, make up about 80 percent of Dubai's population. So generally I'm finding it not an easy task to decide when to act upon which rule with people - are they Arabic, should I use what I read about good manners in Arabia? Or are they more internationally-minded, so I can simply adhere to our European codex of good manners? I definitely gave up on greeting people in shops in Arabic, as with very few exceptions so far, they all came from other nations so English was more appropriate. A good approach is to hold back a little, and see how the others behave and adapt your ways to that - at least in the beginning.

The pot in the picture above, by the way, is a small dallah, a special traditional coffee pot. Supposedly not the original UAE/Dubai design - which can be found on the back of the 1 Dirham coin (see right).

And such a dallah is what I bought last weekend at the Arabic Souk style shopping mall of Madinat Jumeirah (see - I get back to what I promised to write about earlier!). And without meaning to, I was quite successful at haggling - which is what you should try almost anywhere apart from in restaurants or supermarkets maybe.

The reason is: The price in many Arabic countries is, from the point of view of the seller, more the starting point for a discussion than what you actually pay in the end; the price will invariably be too high in the beginning. And don't worry, nothing will ever be sold without any profit. So haggling really is about making the markup as small as possible. There are translations of hillarious conversations around, also in some guide books, in which people not only ask about each other's well-being during a sales talk about dresses, but about family as well and supposedly even invent connections with people the other indicates to know just for the sake of establishing a link with each other. I have the distinct feeling that I should even have tried to haggle when I got a hair cut the other day - because the amount I paid seemed to be not in relation to other normal costs around here. However, I understand the tradition of haggling is much stronger in other Arabic countries. So it may be better not to exaggerate. There's certainly less drama in buying a carpet here than maybe in a traditional Egyptian market.

Back to my only half-intentional haggling. The thing is: I found the dallah in question quite expensive indeed; and was really reluctant to spend what I considered to be a lot of money on something I merely wanted to buy as a souvenir. So while I was standing there, with wrinkled forehead, trying to make up my mind if I really wanted to buy a souvenir like that at all, probably making incomprehensible noises of doubt in the process, the salesman just kept lowering the price more and more. After some time, he asked me what I'd consider a good price. Sure he'd object, I said a price still well below what he was asking for. To my utter surprise he said ok. So this is how it came that I got a souvenir - which probably is the cultural equivalent to a German cuckoo clock - at almost half the marked price.

Still I felt bad for spending the money. Which is why I decided to take a public bus instead of a taxi back. Which turned out to be a bad mistake.

Because, while buses are really new (and very cheap), run quite often on the main routes and even bus stops are air-conditioned, there is only a selection of the stops en route on display at the stop; and never a sign inside the bus where you could see where you actually are. Trying to follow the streets which the bus was slowly making his way through on a map, with street signs more than hard to read if there are at least two lanes of heavy traffic between you and them while darkness is falling, is as futile as resistance to Borgs in the Star Trek universe. So after a while, and as the person I asked for help apparently knew his way around (which is not necessarily the case if you approach people in the street, even though most will point in a certain direction; but they will do so even if they have little clue what you are talking about, simply for the sake of being polite and really wanting to help - I experienced that when I was looking for an ATM, and was sent in a new direction every time I asked only to find out there was one in the building I had started from), I got off.

And walked. Which took a long, long time. So coming by a shopping mall, I decided to make another buy - a Blue Bedouin CD (chillout music inspired by traditional themes and instruments, by a local Dubai band - go here and scroll down to "Hussain Al Bagali' to read about the man) to offset the frustration with some more retail therapy.

The next day, Saturday, I just went to the beach after I had visited the mosque (see my earlier entry) - to Jumeirah beach park to be exact, not far away from the Jumeirah Mosque, where you pay a few dirhams but get a nice beach next to a green park for. After having a healthy burger with fries, I had a healthy nap in the sand. And that was it for that day. Good I was protected from the sun by the sand in the air higher above the ground, which apparently came from a sand storm the day before. I really need du bai sunscreen.