The streets are emptying in Dubai, which is great if you are trying to get around that city by town. Scientists reckon that at this rate, by July there will be approximately 1 mall for every 8 people. That is not a reflection on the how few people there will be left but more on how many malls there are in that town.
Article I wrote for ME Media Week.
If ever we needed evidence that the economic downturn is hitting the UAE, cast your eyes over this picture. The old toss the ball in the milk can and win a stupid stuffed animal game. Looks so easy doesn’t it? Well it does to my 6 year-old daughter. ‘Go on Daddy. Win me one.’ I hear the unspoken message in those words – ‘All the other dads can do it. If you really love me you’ll get me that giant stuffed white thing which is based loosely on a lion, that I have been madly in love with for the past 25 seconds.’
This game is a scam, as any father who has given in to his child’s pleading and eyelid fluttering will tell you. For a start, the balls are way bigger than the little white one we see popping into the milk can in this picture. Much bigger. So big in fact I suspect even if you do manage to get it over the hole, it wont fit in. I haven’t been able to confirm this yet because the rims of these milk cans were designed by NASA scientists. You know how they used to calculate the angles so a spaceship would catch the gravity of the moon and slingshot back to earth? They’ve applied the same theory to the rims of the milk cans. The ball catches the rim, spins round and flies off into some distant Emirate.
See the little i? That stands for IDIOT. They can get away with that, because they know you’ll try anyway. The guys who work these stalls have degrees in child psychology. Notice how after each miss, they smile nicely and say ‘Try again sir?’ This is subtly aimed at your kid and their reaction is always ‘Oh yes daddy. Please. Please.’
What is that white four-legged thing you can win? White lion? Polar bear? Or some hideous genetically modified mixture of the two. Are we helping to fund gruesome genetic experiments by playing this game? Is that the sick twisted truth? I suggested that to my daughter. She just pointed longingly at the mountain of white fluff and fluttered her eyelids again. They always have loads of those mutant animals stacked up. As if to say, ‘We know all you super skilled men will be talking loads of these home so we have to stock up.’
But times are changing. Things are tougher now. Not the game thankfully. I guess if they wanted to take it to the next level they could introduce basketballs. Or hook you up to a car battery, so you get an electric shock each time you miss.
What’s different is there aren’t so many suckers lining up to part with their cash. The milk can boys know why. Not only are the smiling financial assassins in those booths trained in child psychology, they also watch the world’s financial markets with falcon like intensity. Fair enough. Apart running around picking up all the oversized balls, and taking your money, there isn’t a lot to do is there? Their tweaking of the token to ball ratio is in direct response to what’s happening around the world. Wondering when this financial rollercoaster of doom is going to bottom out?
Forget watching the markets or wading through the endless predictions from business boffins around the globe. Keep an eye on your local milk can stand. When the prices go back to normal, that’s the time to jump back into the share market.
So there is a plague of locusts in Al Ain in the UAE. It was in the paper yesterday. The Government is warning people not to eat them because of the pesticides. Apparently they are yummy when they are roasted, which makes them popular. Flying finger food delivered direct to your door.
Must be hard being a locust, the first thing everyone thinks is ‘Oh, I bet god sent them’. No one ever gives locusts credit for going somewhere because a shit load of them just feel like it.
And spare a thought for poor old Larry or Louis Locust. No one ever sees them as individuals. They’re just part of this big flying mass of mouths. And no one would want to be one of the poor suckers at the back. When you get to a field, thousands have already munched out. Everything has little locust bite marks all over it. But you can’t go off and eat somewhere else. Oh no. Because then you wont be part of the plague. No, you have to stay in the group. ‘It’s a great way to see the world’ your parents tell you. That’s fine, if you’re flying on the outside of the plague. But not many locusts get to do that. Most locusts just see lots of other locusts. Above them, below them, left and right. Stay tight, stay in formation they are always being told. Got to keep up appearances. Got to look plaguey.
This is a weird place. It is like a nation on steroids. Well, oil actually. Everything happens in a hurry here. Prices and buildings go up faster than anywhere else in the world and the speed thing transfers onto the roads too.
You know how in a normal country if it starts raining, people slow down a bit? Not here. Rain just means people want to get where they are going faster. Fog is a similar story. A Lebonese mate of mine who is a speed nut explained why he drove home at night in thick fog at over 170 K’s in the fastlane. He said if he went any slower he risked being run into from behind by a speeding car…I’ve already picked out the black shirt for his funeral.
The main drag between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is almost as dangerous as the road from Baghdad airport. The speed limit in the UAE seems to be a rough guide only. Or that’s how everyone treats it.
So I’m barreling along at 160 in my little rental car, thinking I am truckin and suddenly a large white four by four screams into the rear view mirror with his lights flashing, which is the Emirate sign for ‘get out of my way, my Lexus is 2 months old and I have to get to the dealer and trade it in’.
The speeding local races past and as I watch him ripping up the fast lane with his chunky tread at 180, I think to myself, there goes an impatient driver…until, a few seconds later, he is overtaken on the outside, on that spare bit of road between the lane marking and the crash barrier, by a guy in another 4x4 going about 215.
This is a typical drive from Abu to Dubai, so it’s no surprise that like their buildings and indoor ski fields, when the Emeraties have a car crash, they make it the biggest in the world.
Cars only burst into flames in crashes, in two places. The movies and the UAE. It happens all the time, but this morning’s bash and burn was big, even by UAE standards. Over 200 cars. Here’s a link taken by some rubber neckers a few hours after the carnage. ff to around the 6 min mark to see the real wrecks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-RbMT5DJpY
They’re building the worlds biggest everything in the UAE so it is no surprise the world’s tallest building is going up in Dubai. Incidentally, a mate told me the project manager is a Kiwi. Cool eh. We’re everywhere.
This will be the first building in the world that has lifts you can use in a fire. Essential if the owners ever hoped to get the fire brigade to turn out for a fire.
I don’t know how fast the lifts will be, but perhaps they could put café’s in them so you could have a couple of flat whites and read the paper on the way up or down.
For residents, being in the world’s tallest building will change the way they live.
“Honey, I’m going to be late home tonight.”
“Where are you now?”
“The basement. I’m just getting into the lift. Kiss the kids goodnight for me.”
Sadly the world’s tallest building will probably attract suicide jumpers. But they could use the height to help save lives. Jumpers have to put on a parachute and are given a cell phones at the top. On the way down the jumper gets a call from the suicide hotline and they try to talk the person out of it. If they do change their mind there will still be time to pull the ripcord and float down.
The even bigger news is I am told they are planning an even BIGGER building in Kuwait. Twice as high as the Dubai one. 1 mile up. They should put airplane toilets on the top floor so that people who are afraid of flying have a chance to join the mile high club.
