Dubai - June 2013

After being in retirement for 6 months the opportunity to do a little work came up whilst I was in England.   Nothing serious, just a week of work in Dubai holding the hand of a new Infostat customer as they rolled out our software.   Since I was over in England, it made sense to send me rather than have someone come all the way from California.

I flew out of Manchester to Zurich where I connected with the Swissair flight to Dubai.  A slight mishap at Manchester airport when I found my reservation had been cancelled and I had to scramble to buy a new ticket at an inflated price, but we survived.  

What a beautifully clean, tidy and modern airport Zurich is; just what you would expect from the Swiss.   Though neither my arriving or departing flight were on time, which somewhat spoiled the reputation for timeliness that the Swiss have.  Regardless, it was a real pleasure to stroll through the un-crowded airport.

In Dubai, the airport was also nice and clean and tidy, though on a whole grander scale than Zurich’s.  Then, of course, the big difference was when you walked outside and felt the onslaught of the heat and humidity.  

Dubai Metro

To get to my hotel the taxi ride was pretty much through the entire length of the city/state/emirate or whatever you call it.   I got a good feel for how modern and high rise the whole area was and how large it all was horizontally as well as vertically – all very impressive.

Dubai seems to be laid out in discrete pods of high rise buildings alongside a backbone of a major highway and metro system.   I was staying in a the Jumeirah Lakes Towers area.  The Bonnington Hotel – quite luxurious and just what I needed.

View from Burj Khalifa

The next morning was Saturday, not a work day in Dubai, their weekend is Friday and Saturday.  So I became a tourist for the day.  There is one of those hop on, hop off bus tours that takes you around the sights so I decided to do that.  That required a metro trip to the Mall of the Emirates.  The Metro itself was quite wonderful.   Air conditioned, clean, quite new and featuring the world’s fastest driverless trains.  It was a real wonder to experience it.   A long, long way from the Metropolitan Line in London.

I boarded the bus, a double-decker, with running commentary of the trip in a selection of languages and for a while I was brave enough to sit outside in the open air upper deck.   That lasted about 5 minutes.   It was hovering around 40 deg C and the humidity was high.  It was quite withering.

I don’t know what I was expecting but there doesn’t seem to be anything much older than say 10 years to see in Dubai.  Everything looks like it was just built yesterday.

Yes there is an older part of town around the Dubai Creek, but it is not that big and not that impressive.  It was nice to do a little boat trip down the Dubai Creek and observe the old dhows loading up with cargo, and the smaller abras carrying passengers across the creek.

Dubai Creek

Apart from that it was Malls, high-rise buildings, man-made islands, five star hotels and expensive shops.   I did the obligatory trip up the Burj Khalifa the world’s tallest building at 2700ft.   It is indeed an impressive structure and you can get to an observation platform about ¾ of the way up.  Then there is the indoor ski-slope in one of the malls, and the largest acrylic panel on the front of an aquarium in another mall, a huge waterfall in another mall.   Then there is the Palm Jumeira - the man made island in the shape of a palm tree, the Barj el Arab, the self designated 7 star hotel.  All impressive modern stuff but how can it be sustainable?  I want to see it in 50 years time.

Burj Khalifa

At the end of the day I was exhausted from the heat and humidity but I think that I had seen nearly everything that Dubai had to offer.  

Sunday was the start of the work week.  Nothing challenging - they just wanted someone to be there to answer questions as they got ready to roll out our software to Egypt and Indonesia.   A couple of things I noticed - there are an awful number of Brits working in Dubai, there are also an awful number of Indians too.  Some of these folks smoke - in particular the two that I was working with.  Since the trip for a smoke involved a trip from the 31st floor to the ground floor and out the door, these smoke breaks, of which there were many, were a serious drag on time.  It has been a long time since I had been around smokers.

Talking of expats, the Emiratis are a minority in their own country.  I believe in 2012 the Emiratis were just 9% of the population with a whopping 91% being expatriates.  A significant number of those are Indian, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis that do all the work.  I didn’t see where they all lived but by the time that I went to work, they were there laboring on the many construction sites, cleaning the offices and homes.  I think if you look closely there are some pretty unsavoury things going on with these folks and their working conditions.

Barj El Arab Hotel

After work, we went out on a couple of nights for a drink.  We went to the Marina area which is just another collection of high rises towers next to a marina with a lot of very large, very expensive looking boats.   The wealth is in your face wherever you look here.  Lots of bars too and alcohol though somewhat expensive is readily available for the expats.

Dubai at night

Nothing too spectacular happened for the rest of the week.  I returned back to the UK, again via Zurich overnight Thursday evening/Friday morning.   An interesting trip for sure, but Dubai is not a place I would not put high on my list of places to revisit.

Here is a link to all the photos from this trip on my Smugmug site.