Day 1
Saturday, November 22, 2008
posted by joseph at 2:00 PM
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Nov 15th, Saturday
(Day 1)
The plan had originally been to have a city tour for the first half of the day, followed by a talk from Mr Richard Jones on the UAE and Dubai. However, we found out that in the UAE, (or maybe in the Middle East in general) the work week starts on Sunday, ending on thursday. it being the last day of the weekend, Mr Jones wasn't free and the University of Dubai wasn't open.
Anyway, we woke up around 7:20 and got ready for Breakfast downstairs. Getting into the formal attire reminded me of Pre-U Seminar very much. I took some pictures of the hotel room, and they are the ones in the previous post. Breakfast was a small American Breakfast, with the egg (ommelet), sausages (too soft) mushrooms (button), juices, tea and coffee, yoghurt and some fruits. I went two rounds.
The four of us living in the same room (Amir, Horm Earm, Shafiq and I, with me sharing a room with Shafiq) got down earliest, so we spent some free time reading the newspapers. In our formal attire and reading the news, it seemed like some businessman sort of atmosphere. The bus came soon enough, and we started our tour.
The tour guide's definition of going to places seriously needed an overhaul. Save for the medium-sized by beautiful mosque we visited, (even that, we couldn't really go into) everything else was like stopping one kilometer from the site of interest to spend 10minutes taking pictures.
Guide: Now, we are going to (insert place of interest), this beatiful kind of property. In the past, (place of interest) was never there! Everything sand! No building! We will stop there for (duration varying 5-15minutes) to take some pictures, and then we can visit (next destination), another beautiful kind of property.
Imagine hearing it many many times in sucession. Some of us laughed at it after a while, since all he said for most of the time was beautiful, kind of, and property. We 'visited' the mosque, a shopping museum (where price tags were around the 998500 dirham range, with no zeros, making it all the more eye-opening) the Burj Al Arab, the Mall of the Emirates (and the ginormous in-house ski slope and fun zone), the Marina Bay, the Palm Jumeriah and its Atlantis resort, the Gold Souk, the Dubai Museum (now that one was really interesting. And the ticket price was just 1Dirham! (40cents)) before going back to the Mall of the Emirates to shop and eat dinner, then finally going to a spice souk.
The guide clued us in to the irrigation system. Since it is the desert after all, every single peice of greenery one saw was fitted with either sprinkers or a watering mechanism. And I do mean every. Grass, flowers, shrubs and Date trees, save for the palm trees at the beaches and desert shrubs all had nearby irrigation.
He also claimed that the first high-density building Dubai had constructed, when all else was mostly sand, was a 39-storey building. He clued us to the importance of cheques here, (possibly with all the high-figure transactions?) saying that bouncing cheques would immediately land a person in jail. Also, petrol came at less than half the price of Singapore's prices, at 6.25 dirhams a gallon (3litres or so?)
Overall, I got the feeling that apart from the foreboding megaprojects, the infrastructure was generally with a vacant feel. The high-rise buildings were either for lease or in the midst of construction, and it was confirmed on the flight in. All the low-density buildings were lit up (the roads were especially well-lit) but the high-rise areas were a black mass.
We came back to the Hotel, doing the usual washing up. I drank a cup of milo and chatted a bit with the roommates before turning in.
posted by joseph at 2:00 PM