Living in the real world

Dubai is so fake, Dubai is not the real world and Dubai is like Disneyland ! These are some of the comments I've heard people say about Dubai over the years. I have to admit I have never asked them what they mean when they say the "real world" but I think that they are referring to the US and Europe, a world where people pay taxes, commute to work using public transport and have a democracy.

When people say Dubai is not real, I guess they are talking about things like Palm Island, tax free incomes, and a media which never seems to say anything critical of the country's leaders.

Fair enough, these things may make Dubai fake, but why is the US and Europe the "real world?" I think the "real world" should be an expression used to describe how the majority of people on this planet live. If you pick a person at random on earth, there is a greater than 50% chance that the person you pick will be someone who lives on less than US$ 2 a day. I am not exaggerating, more than half the world's population lives below the poverty line of US$ 2 a day. More than half the world's population has never made a phone call (you can confirm these statistics if you do a search on google for "poverty statistics" or something similar).

For a person who has such a life, life in the US or Europe must seem like a Disneyland where people can afford to spend money on going to the cinema and eat out at restaurants, rather than just make enough to survive.

Sweating it out

This morning I posted quite a long article about public transport in Dubai. My friend Mira read it and although she liked the article, she said that it was too informative and I should avoid things like that on my blog. Damn you Mira!!

Well, I guess she has a point and I doubt many people are going to want to read a 1000 word article on a blog about buses and traffic and so on.

So anyway, if you look at the photo above, you can see 2 guys at a bus stop taking shelter under a tree. I took this photo in July when the outside temperature was 40+ degrees and the feeling of the sun on your head is so intense. I passed some other bus stops as well, where there weren't any nearby tress and some people were holding bits of paper over their heads and some had umbrellas. Why are there no shades over these bus stops? Its a real shame that a city which has all these ultra luxury developments, indoor ski slopes, 7 star hotels, etc, chooses to completely ignore the needs of people who travel on public transport.

To be fair, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) did announce plans to build air conditioned bus stops, but is every bus stop in the city going to be air conidtioned? If not, then there should at least be some simple shaded structures.

Finally, here is a quote from Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister summarising her attitude about public transport:
"A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself a failure.”

News

Brazil won yesterday’s match 4-0.

I was reading the newspaper this morning, and was surprised to find that there is quite a high level of freedom here. Check this from today's Arab Times (a Kuwaiti newspaper):

“…anyone who has read the news objectively and rationally will inevitably conclude that the reform slogans raised by the (Kuwaiti) MPs, are just material for local consumption and a vehicle for blackmailing senior officials in a bid for personal benefits.”

I don’t know anything about the background to this article, but I've never seen a UAE newspaper publish an article which is that critical of MPs.

Brazil, Liberation

The Brazilian Football team are in Kuwait. They have a match against the Kuwaiti team. I went to the stadium this evening to try to get tickets, but a policeman told me they had all been sold out. There were a lot of people outside the stadium, and I saw several Kuwaiti youngsters wearing the Brazilian team’s jersey which seemed a bit bizarre.

On the way back from the stadium to my hotel I saw a sign on the side of the road showing the Kuwaiti, American, British and Australian flags. Above the four flags is written: “Friends and Allies forever,” a reference to the liberation of Kuwait. I asked a Kuwaiti guy I met about that the next day, and he said something like, of course, it's true, but when our oil finishes, they can remove the forever from the sign.

I've seen two other things related to this liberation of Kuwait. One is a huge tower dominating the skyline called "liberation tower." Secondly, the newspaper I get delivered to my room – Arab Times - describes itself as "The first English language newspaper in free Kuwait."

Arrival in Kuwait

So here I am in Kuwait. At the airport, in the arrivals lounge, one of the first people I see is a woman carrying a sign saying “All US military personnel.” In the build up to the 2003 Iraq war, a third or maybe a half of the country - the uninhabited desert part - had been blocked off and reserved for the American military. I wonder if it's still like that.

My first impressions of the city are that it's planned for a population much bigger that the one it has. On the way to the airport, I travel along 4 lane highways and see only very few cars. Later after arriving at the hotel, I go for a walk around, and again, see wide roads but very few cars and people. Actually, I suppose its like that because its Ramadan and the sun was about to set so people are at home with their families. Anyway, it looks like a very well planned, neat and compact city. While walking around my hotel, I see a Roman Catholic Church close to the beach, and about 200 people standing outside queuing to enter.