Mumbai Singapore Cocktail. Review on Dubai

This is not a travel guide... but my personal impressions built about Dubai in the last 1 month of my stay here.... :)

Location:

To the west of India, starts where technically... Arabian Sea... through a small gap between Oman and Iran becomes Persian Gulf. Has big daddy Saudi to the south and Oman to the east and the entire north is the persian gulf and Iran right above the persian Gulf.

First Impression

The first impression you get at landing in 'gelf' ( for those who are wondering... its the way he malu's pronounce GULF) is that you have landed right into a mall... the airport is a riot of duty free shops and dubai makes its intention very clear about making you shop till you drop. And I did not dissapoint them... I instantly entered the duty free and purchased one bacardi and smirnoff ( on the request of Dinesh- a friend who works with emirates, who accosted me as soon as I stepped out of the aerobridge). The logic is, there are no wine shops in this place.. and the daru in the bars are expensive... and when one needs to buy daru, one needs to have a permit to do so... so, every true alcoholic requests anyone he knows landing to buy some bottles from Duty free ( its cheap and one can get upto 4 bottles).

If you are landing in Dubai in summer , then be prepared to be blown by furnace hot air as soon as you step out of the airport ac.. but dont fret... soon you'd step into a taxi or car which of course is airconditions. As one drives into Dubai , one is instantaniouly hit by the sight of scores of metal ''Right Angles'' standing on its heads... these are tower cranes and they are all over the place... the whole real estate boom taking place here is right on your face...i have been told that 1/4th of the world's tower cranes are here in Dubai.... as one drives in the cab, one is pleasantly pleased by the bollywood music on the radio... the driver looks exactly like you and you dont even think twice before speaking to him in hindi.... as you drive through the streets speaking to the driver, who instantaneously gives you his complete background.. place of birth etc... you find it hard to believe that this is another country.. but the roads are great and one flies over bridges one sees only in 'plans' of MMRDA...

People

'Gelf' is undoubtedly the playground of the Malayalis... they are all over the place, mostly seen on fridays in street corners standing akimbo and holding the backs of their lungis a few centimeters over their thin black knees and of course not to forget their neatly maintained mamooty style thick moustaches. Among the Indians, the oldest populations here is of the Sindhis.. they arrived here even before the oil was struck and have become prolofic and wealthy traders. Most of the families have been here since the last 50 years when Dubai was just another local port and they are typically textile and garment traders. Till date the old 'souks'- wholesale markets exist and the trade is still about importing mainly from China, indonesia, korea and selling to buyers from poor african countries like somalia, kenya, nigeria, sudan , algeria etc.Then the rest are smattering of people from all over the country. Among the other nationalities, one can see loads of Pakistanis here, The third biggest community are the philipinos and then people from other gulf countries like yemen, muscat etc... there is a high presence of people from central asian ( former russian republics) . And of course there are the brits ( the masters of the arabs) and the other goras...

Oh! I forgot to mention about the arabs, the locals constitue about 30% of the polulation of the country :) . Most of them are stinking rich and move around which the choicest of wheels and women. For people who love cars.. one can see the most amazing of models zipping the streets.

In the social ladder first come the arabs, followed by the brits, and then the rest of the asians.

Business

There are three businesses which flourish in Dubai, 1) Real Estate 2) Banking & Finance 3) Flesh

There is loads of land here ( since its a desert) and thus the sheikhs here have decided to remove all the sand and construct among the swankiest real estate properties in the world. In fact they are making the most of the sea. They are creating 3 giant man made islands in the form of a PALM and 1 island in the shape of the GLOBE. And all of them are gonna house exotic resorts. Also the worlds tallest building is being built here in Dubai... its gonna be about 189 floors and they developer is keeping provision to build more floors incase some other coutry decides to build a taller tower. These people have a passion to do everything larger than life.. the the worlds biggest mall ( with a sking slope.. right in the middle of the REGISTHAN) and they also have erected the worlds tallest flag pole :)

There's loads of money floating around here and therefore all teh banks worth their salt have set up businesses here

With all this money and this place being positioned also as a convention centre... flesh has automatically followed. After night fall the streets of Dubai repersent a United Nation of Skin and flesh , right from Russians, Chinese ( they have not even left this market), morrocans, Algerians, American, English, Chezch, ukraine, ethyopian, Indian , srilankan , philipino... all is available.

Excerice

The palce most residents go for an excercise are the malls... the malls here are gigantic.. and by the time our fat aunties would have completed a days shopping they would have covered a distance of the official Olympic walkathon distance. They then make up for all the weight lost at the food court.. where again food from mexican to lebenese to greek to Indian is available.

Traffic Jams

Its an order of the day...

Food is cheap, explains why a true blue 'Gelfi's' birth right is to put on weight in all the wrong places.There are Indian restaurants all over the place. Your heart swells with pride seeing your original chennai ''Sarvana Bhavan' having 3 restaurants here and also inn places like singapore,malaysia, UK , america and makes one believe that India is truly going global, then you have your Sukh Sagar., Shiv Sagar, Chappan Bhog and even Haji ALi Juice Centre ( can you believe that???? ) .... only mahesh lunch home is missing.

So, life here is pretty decent... my take is that its the only place in the world which can give you a 'home away from home' feel