Dubai the fastest-growing city on earth

[AGENDA21]

It looks like a hot Grozny. On the vast invented islands offshore and in the even vaster building sites that stretch in a wide band the whole length of Dubai's now famous riviera, acre on acre of grey-faced, concrete, hollow-eyed buildings, fenced in with scaffolding and overhung by tower cranes, stare at each other across the sands. Tower blocks look abandoned rather than half-made. It is said that a fifth of the world's cranes are now at work here. An army of some 250,000 men, largely from India and Pakistan, are labouring to create the new glimmer fantasy, earning on average £150 a month, and living in camps, four to a room, 12ft by 12ft, hidden away in the industrial quarters of al Quoz. One night in one of the luxury hotels would cost six months' wages of one of the men who built it. Below and around their work sites, the new streets are chaotic with rubble and piles of steel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1708287,00.html

[GrumpyGreg]

1. And the noisiest---24 hour a day construction.

[babylonsister]

2. Dubai and the UAE are LOADED; money is paramount! This per

some friends who used to work over there. LOTS of shopping and spending going on.

[rzemanfl]

3. Have you seen the pictures of the home of the Emir and the

indoor ski hill? I don't have a link but they are amazingly disgusting.

[Richard D]

4. I believe

that the "home" pictures circulating around are actually a hotel.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. haha....look before you link, I guess

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/the_palace_of_sheikh_zayed_bin_sultan_al_nahyan/

''Of course, the pictures don't show a sheik's palace. In reality they show a fancy hotel in Abu Dhabi called the Emirates Palace. All the stuff about 20 wives is bogus too. If Love had bothered to do any research, he would have found this out. He probably could also have found some real pictures of a sheik's palace, which would have been a more effective way of making his point. Incidentally, my other house (the one in my daydreams) looks just like the one in the pictures.''

EDITED to cover up gullibility

there IS a picture of a silver Audi, though, whichi isn't in this set of pictures

[rzemanfl]

13. Is the indoor ski hill real? n/t

[Richard D]

18. Yes

There's actually a few of them in the world. Engineering and insulation marvels.

[Gabi Hayes]

6. I have a slide show of the house.....unbelievable

I can't copy anything.....can I do a screenshot? don't know how to do that, even

there's a car made out of SILVER at the end of the show.

I can forward it to somebody, but it's an attachment

it'll really make you mad

[rzemanfl]

12. That's the one I have, plus the ski slope. Unbelieveable. n/t

[adriennui]

5. how soul deadening

is this.

[catmother]

7. isn't dubai the place where michael jackson is living?

:think:

[susu369]

14. Isn't Dubai the place where Osama went to the hospital

and the CIA agent met him two months before September 11th?

And, isn't Dubai the place where Karen Hughes is currently doing pr work re: how Americans respect Moslems?

I tell ya: a real happening place.

[Hatalles]

15. I think so... I visited there once for a week...

Bustling metropolis where the old world meets the new world... There's a river that runs straight through that you can take boat rides on and watch the sunset reflect back from the skyskrapers on one side of the river. They also have the LARGEST mall I've ever seen... HUUUGE. There was also a small historical park just outside the city... a small fisherman community where they maintained the huts, boats, etc.

And one of the hotels there... didn't stay there... but checked it out... AMAZING view off the beach. Architecture was beautiful.

[catmother]

16. i'm answering my own question. dubai is the place where

michael jackson is living.

[lovuian]

8. Its the richest nation in the world....... Notice america is now

the most in debt nation...

[catmother]

17. could it be that we're borrowing our money from them. i thought

it was china and japan -- might just be dubai and they want to collect some interest.:dilemma:

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Interesting bit here:

I asked him why Dubai was going through this world-busting surge. One might have expected the straightforward business answer, which goes something like this: Dubai, unlike other parts of the Gulf, has little of its own oil or gas. A great deal of Arab money, invested in the US, came back from there after 9/11 and needed an outlet. The fact that oil is now pushing $70 a barrel means that the Gulf is awash with liquidity. There is clearly a role for a strategic financial centre in the Middle East: Beirut played it once, Dubai could do so now. Money has been draining out of Iran for years and Dubai, just across the Gulf, has always been a traditional place for Iranians to put their money to work. Mohammed Noor Taleb, a 75-year-old textile trader I spoke to in the souk, who had lived with his mother as a child in a tent made of palm leaves and now owned a business in Indian cottons turning over $5.2m a year, told me an old Dubai joke. A young boy is asked by his father "What is two add two?" "Am I buying or am I selling?" the boy says. Commerce is in the blood.

So Arab money might have been in the USA earlier, if it hadn't been rejected, and turned to Dubai instead.

[MichiganVote]

11. Sounds like a terrorists wet dream

[High Plains]

19. It's a huge commercial center

I spent a couple of nights there a few months ago. 100 degrees at midnight, people from all over the world shopping on commercial strips that were as gaudy as Times Square or Ginza. Black African guys in robes, Indian guys in whatever you call those shirt things they wear, government bourgeoisie from Zimbabwe burdening under multiple HDTVs, hugh shiny new buildings. It's like one giant shopping mall. And groups of hot young East European women at the airport coming to make a few fast bucks, I suppose.

The airport is a trip, too, and Emirates Airlines rocks! Every seat has individual entertainment consoles with hundreds of movies and sit com episodes, and the seats are big, and the food is good, and the flight attendants wear funny little hats--a sylized sop to Muslim sensibilities, I guess.

If Dubai and the UAE are about anything, it's money.

[JCMach1]

20. Yes! and about the salaries... they are still 5 to 10x

What they would be making in their home country for the same work if they could get it...
Most construction workers are here for a number of months and they return to their home country with the earnings...

This is Asia... a good salary looks very different.