Dubai Update: The Arabian Fantasy Land

Dubai Creek

I am back. And now more on Dubai.

Dubai is a fantastic place, for construction people like me. Everything is in the process of being built. It is a city full of sky scrapers and tower cranes, including the soon-to-be 800m high Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, for now. There’s news that Dubai is planning an even taller building, a 1.2km high building that will connect earth to Heaven.


Some of the buildings lining Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai

Dubai is also a wonderful haven for shoppers. There is a shopping mall with an indoor ski resort (yes, a ski resort in a bloody 50 degree C desert). There is one with different architecture from different parts of the world. There is one shaped like an enormous emu (kidding, I made that up). And Dubai is gonna have the biggest shopping mall in the world by 2009. Anyway, the shopping malls are a great place for us to hang out in our free time. We can shop, see movies, look at interesting and weird people, eat at the multiple food courts, shop some more, and blow away all our savings – which is what Dubai wants us to do I think, with its Dubai Shopping Festivals and such.


Inside the Dubai Festival City


The lobby of the Dragonmart where all things Chinese in Dubai can be found (this is the place for cheapskates like me…)


Anu at the galleria of the Mall of the Emirates (where Ski Dubai is)

The roads and highways in Dubai are just as amazing. The project we’ve recently just got is to increase a six lane road (it ain’t even called a highway) into a 12-lane road. Some of the major roads in Dubai have something like 18 lanes and dedicated flyovers to God-knows-where. Our current project involved expanding a 4-lane road into a 6-lane road in the middle of a Residential Area, so that cars can zoom home at 150 km/h, never mind the pedestrians, baby trams, cyclists, joggers, pets… besides, who’s gonna walk around in the bloody heat huh? Anyway, Dubai has one of the highest rates of traffic accidents per capita in the world, so it’s no big deal.


Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai

Cars are cheap here. And so is petrol. Unlike Malaysia, Dubai is still rich enough to keep fuel prices ‘low’ (about RM 1.20 per litre of petrol), and is more interested in making money in other ways such as forcing poor people, like yours truly, to go through driving lessons (minimum 20 lessons) and take driving tests, despite having 20 years driving experience. The initial cost of the lessons and the test is about RM 2,300. If you fail, and about 99% fail on their first try, you’ll have to cough up another RM 700 or so, and it goes on until you pass. Dubai’s mission when it comes to driving is to make it as difficult as possible for a poor fellow to get a license so that they can increase the country’s revenues by taking advantage of stupid migrant workers (like yours truly) wanting to drive a car. Licenses from developed countries (like Singapore) can be converted by paying a fee of RM 135. And now you know why the rich stay rich while the poor become poorer.

Rich people (locals and those from the developed countries) drive fantastic cars. Convertibles are a common thing and are usually driven by whites (probably so that they can sunbathe in the soon-to-be 50 degree C afternoon sun while they drive, and get a feel of fabulous desert sand). There are Hummers and Humvees (which I used to like when I saw it in The Rock) that look like gigantic tupperwares. There are sports cars of all types, and impossibly long limousines for the people with long legs and their pet giraffes.

OK, going back to work now. Here’re more pictures for the time being.


Dubai Creek on a dusty day


An abra (boat) station at the man-made waterway of the Souq Madinat Jumeirah

Dubai Update: Ramblings of a Follow-Up Clerk

Umm Suqeim Beach with the Burj-Al-Arab in the background

Hi! For my family and friends who’re wondering how we’re doing here in Dubai, we’re fine. It’s now our third month here, and the temperature is shooting steadily up. I have nothing much to write about because I’m all grown up now and have now started being responsible, and serious at work (I’m 38 after all, and married). Very soon, I will be like all the typical middle-aged men with serious and boring mindsets, thinking only of career and the future of the family, and then I will finally have nothing to write about. Before I become that serious, here’re some tips if you wanna visit Dubai in the future.

Come to Dubai only if you have to work here, or if you wanna fly to some exotic destinations, like in Somalia or Iraq which you can’t get a direct flight to from wherever you are. Or if you are a sand lover with loads of cash to spare.

Dubai is beautiful. It is sunny, all the time (except at night). It has a long coast line, it is hot (even at night) and it has lots and lots of sand. There are no animals roaming around the streets, no mosquitoes so far (to my delight), and only tiny little cockroaches which are not as scary as the huge ugly ones in Malaysia. It has generally no trees along the sides of the roads, no grass on the shoulders or the middle divider, and only 3 drops of rain since I step foot here. In other words, it is a gorgeous desert.


Our ‘villa’ in Mirdif, Dubai – there’re 7 ‘villas’ in that building

However, Dubai is very rich, and it runs water pipes (called irrigation pipes here) with sprinklers to all the road sides and middle dividers at prominent areas and to gardens of rich people (which means most of the locals) to keep the grass and flowers alive and date palms flourishing. For some reason or other (or maybe because no other fruit trees grow in a bloody desert), date palms are the favourite trees in Dubai and in Arabia in general, so much so that it features prominently as national symbols, and in Dubai, the authorities built 3 huge groups of artificial islands shaped like the beloved date palm in the sea adding more than 1000km of coast line to Dubai.


A billboard showing the planned development on Palm Jumeirah

The Dubai Government is one of the most efficient governments I’ve ever known, especially at making money, which is what is important for the country right? It requires foreign workers to get all their certificates attested at their home country and a second time when they arrive here in Dubai (or that’s what our Company’s PRO tells me). Attesting a certificate at the UAE Embassy in Kuala Lumpur costs RM 150 per certificate (or RM 225 per certificate if you want it ‘express’ i.e. within the day). (For comparison, attesting a certificate at Wisma Putra, i.e. the Malaysian Foreign Affairs Ministry, costs you RM 10, and you get it within 15 minutes). Attesting certificates a second time here in Dubai costs AED 150 (about RM 130) per certificate. The UAE Embassy will only attest certificates / documents issued in Malaysia. And therefore by that logic, if I want to attest my University Degree which is from the UK, I’d have to fly to London, get the British Foreign Ministry to endorse it and then the UAE Embassy in London to attest it. Similarly, if I want to get my Indian Marriage Certificate attested, I’d have to do it in New Delhi. This is brilliant for generating air travel.

I did not have the privilege to travel around the world and therefore I am a ‘Follow-Up Clerk’ here in Dubai, albeit a not-doing-too-bad Follow-Up Clerk. I have no problems with this as long as the Company pays me what they’re supposed to pay me plus give me all the benefits I’m entitled to. The Follow-Up Clerk is now drafting a Project Quality Plan for a new multi-million Project and Procedures for operating the Asphalt Plant – pretty heavy work load for a follow-up clerk I’d say.


Anu and our car at the road outside our ‘villa’ (car number? – C 20586, for the empat-ekor enthusiast)


A road to nowhere near our ‘villa’


Dubai Creek overlooking Deira


Gary & Anu at the Souq Madinat Jumeirah with the bloody expensive 7-star Burj-Al-Arab in the background