Dan and I head back to Dubai in hurry after not finding much in Oman. At the border I get a fresh stamp for another 30days, but I know I’ll be gone before that. I’ve already booked a flight that departs next week to Kochin, India. The rest of my Dubai experience is a series of partying and seeing old faces again.

My friend Mohammad who I use to intern with at Cerner is now visiting Dubai with his sister. It is so strange to see him here in Dubai, but then again I’ve met a lot of people traveling aboard. I say good bye to my Cerner friends, Ex Cerner friends, and Dubai Dawn Patrol dragon boating friends through a series of nights out and a cook out.

Dubai was a nice break for me, but I’m really getting a case of itchy feet so I have to head out. I make a trip to the India consulate in Dubai where I queue for more than an hour waiting for a truck load of Indian construction workers to sort out their issues. Once I reach the counter I am told that since I don’t have a Dubai working permit or residency permit I can only get a 90 day single entry visa. As an American I should be able to get a multiple year multiple entry visa, but since that’s their rules I am stuck paying full price for a 90day tourist visa.

I ended up spending New Years in Dubai which was should have been spectacular. But thanks to a last minute order from Shiek Mohammad all New Years celebrations in Dubai had to be cancelled to show solidarity for Gaza. Thus all party events at all the various hotels had to be canceled. There was a Shakira concert that had to be moved from Dubai to the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi. This didn’t stop us. Michael and I ended up making a liquor run for our house party which was now going to be a lot bigger.

It is really random, but there are a lot of familiar faces here in Dubai. Dan Karr who I use to work with in KC and then hang out with in Paris is here on business. Giang Tran who I use to work with in KC, was on a go-live with in Miami and lived with in Paris is now here in Dubai on vacation. Tom Isherwood who I went to highschool with and survived a car flip on a dirt road with is now working in Dubai. So we all end up celebrating together. Giang and I hit up the usual spots:

the tallest free standing structure Burj Dubai,

The self proclaimed seven star hotel Burj Al Arab,

and Atlantis.

Dubai is truly a unique place. It’s a melting pot of cultures, a concrete jungle of extravagant over the top architecture, a vastly distant lower and upper class and a culture that is truly confused between traditions and modernization. My initial impression of Dubai was positive as a whole. It was somewhere I could see myself and an inspiring place to live. My second impression is much the same, but I feel like I am seeing much of the uglier side of Dubai. This post will focus on mostly the negatives of Dubai.

Dubai’s main attraction from my point of view is its global population. There are literally people from all over the world here. Even with a diverse population there is still an unspoken racial food chain. At the top are the Emirates. Laws seem to magically bend in favor of locals. For example when driving on the highway, it never fails that a local Emirate will tailgate you doing double the speed limit, honking, swerving back and forth impatiently and flashing his brights.

Every business in UAE must be in partnership with a local, which automatically makes most of them rich by most standards. I cannot attest to how true it is, but it’s a common conception that the locals are very lazy. I guess it would make sense if there is not much they need to do, when laws are automatically in their favor.

Second from the top would probably be the Expats. Further down are the Filipinos, which seem to be hired on mostly as hospitality staff. Even further down are the taxi drivers which mostly consist of Pakistanis and Indians. Finally at the very bottom are the construction workers. They are paid next to nothing, work 12hr shifts, 6days a week and 24hrs a day. The live in worker camps on the outskirts of the city and fuel the Dubai’s colossal building growth.

With the rate UAE has developed, there have been many key elements in infrastructure that seems to be missing. The planning stage for this city seems to have been skipped. For a place so modern, it is amazing to discover that there is no sewage system. The entire city is run on septic tanks. Large trucks are used to dispose these tanks on a weekly basis and dump, pun intended, waste at a waste management plant in Sharjah, a neighboring emirate. These trucks wait in mile long queues and are paid by the truckload. Sometimes these truck drivers to get more payments will just illegal dump the waste in the sea.

Dubai roads and highways are oddly networked. The main highway that runs along the Emirate has only a few overpasses. Thus if you miss an exit or need to go the other direction, you sometimes find yourself driving miles down the opposite direction before finding an overpass or a U turn area. In fact U turns are commonly used in getting from point A to point B as 99% of roads here have medians, making left turns impossible.

The major roads and highways usually have names, but most roads do not. This makes getting around almost impossible. Directions are usually given by landmarks such as major hotels or malls. Because of this, Dubai does not have an official postal system. There are no addresses and buildings do not have numbers. “Are you serious?” was my response when I first discovered this. Instead packages have a box where you can draw a picture. For example when Mike gets a package the box shows that his building is across 2 streets from Lamcy Plaza, next to the Sunfresh supermarket, on the 5th floor.

The government is random in their policies. Things can change on a whim. I was able to experience several instances of this. First a bank holiday was declared the day before. Second, policies on UAE ID cards changed back and forth three times since I arrived. Thirdly, the day before New Years Sheik Mo, ruler of Dubai, declared that all Dubai NYE celebrations were to be cancelled to show solidarity for the people of Gaza. Thus all the hotels and nightclubs had to cancel their even at the last minute.

Lastly laws change depending how good of a day the police officer is having, how high up you are on the racial food chain and how soon his shift is up. To me it seems like kids are running this country. Speaking of Sheik Mo this guy looks the same on all of the pictures I’ve seen of him. He always has a grumpy look on his face and is blankly staring up into space. Kind of reminds me Zoolander. To quote the Will Ferrell “Blue Steel, La Tigra, Ferrari, they’re all the same. It’s the same look. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”

Dubai is probably most known for the man made islands. Currently most of them are still under construction with the World Island as one of the newest developments. However after meeting some marine biologists that work out here, I’ve been told that these developments are completely destroying the marine life in this area.

I don’t mean to touch only on the negative aspects of Dubai and I don’t feel like Dubai is bad place overall. I just feel it makes a more interesting post than if I was to say “What up guys, I was in Dubai it’s awesome, like New York and Vegas times 100”

Christmas in Dubai. How polar opposite can one get to celebrating a Christian Holiday in a Muslim country. Nonetheless with the western expat majority here in Dubai, local businesses have no choice but to sway to the majority. There are Christmas decorations everywhere, but sadly no one has the holiday off from work. I celebrate Christmas with a White Elephant Christmas party, a extravagant brunch at the Fairmont Hotel and skiing at Ski Dubai. This is the first hot Christmas I’ve had and I’m beginning to miss the snow.

Today, the Nancys, Gerald, and I went to Ski Dubai. Ski Dubai is a green run at best and says they have five runs, but I only count two. The amazing thing about it is that it is attached to the end of a mall. Emirates Mall is about a 5min drive from Dubai Marina so it’s fairly close and I drive by it all the time either picking up Nancy from the Trade Center or going to explore the rest of Dubai. It is a fairly ugly structure from the outside but the fact that there is a skiing in a desert is pretty impressive.

Later inside the mall I find an electronics store called Kansas Digital to replace my broken Tamron lens. I ended up buying a Sigma 17-70 here. Gerald tried to get me a Filipino discount and I tried to get a Kansas discount, but they wouldn’t budge. It was still cheaper than the states and I am really glad that I now have a working standard zoom lens.

Nancy belongs to a Dragon Boat team, kind of like crew, but it’s different. I say different for a lack of a better word to describe the awkward style of rowing. The boat seats about 20 some people in rows of two, so you are only rowing on one side of the boat. There is a person at the back working, what I would consider the rudder. However since it doesn’t look like your traditional rudder and more like a long paddle, I’m sure it’s probably called something else. The rowing style consists of making an A shape with your arms. Much of the power comes from your back and shoulders. The form was really difficult to get use to.

My first day at dragon boating was really intense. To be honest I was kind of tired just from the warm up. Furthermore it was really confusing too. Because our coach’s name is Wai, pronounced why. But for someone reason some people would call her “Way”. I’ve only ever met one other Wei in my life and she went by her American name of Maria so this was really strange for me. Now I know how all the Johns and Jennifers feel.

Eventually I got to like Dragon Boating and made some friends there too. We got to a point where we were doing a meet to show off the sport at Dubai Festival City. Oh yeah all the different areas of Dubai are called cities, ei Internet City, Media City, International City, etc. It was hot and during the middle of the day. I think I was dehydrated from the night before too and also running around at 3am trying to find breakfast items with Ben, but that’s an entirely other story.

It was a really short race but the sun just made us all really tired. Afterwards, Nancy#1, Nancy#2, Ben and I headed to Barracudas for a liquor run. Barracudas is a liquor store out in the middle of nowhere and when I say nowhere I mean we drove by a giant sand dune to get to it. This store has alcohol from all over the world to suit the needs of all the expats. In Dubai you must have a liquor card to buy alcohol in bulk and also there is a heavy tax. However, here in BFE the prices are good. To really bring out the point of BFE, here are some pictures of us playing on a sand dune on the way to middle of nowhere liquor store.

Ever since Nancy #2 has arrived in Dubai Nancy #1 has been doing a lot of dinner parties. And since my mom is always concerned that I somehow forget to eat meals unless she cooks it, here are some pictures of the awesome meals that I have been enjoying. It was nice to have a home cooked meal after traveling for so long and cooking itself was much more enjoyable after not having a kitchen for so long.

Me and Ben are laughing in this picture because we didn’t do any work.

There are two Nancy’s in the Cerner Middle East offices now. To avoid confusion we have adopted Nancy 1.0 and Nancy 2.0, who is only here temporarily from the states. 1.0 and 2.0 are both working in A-Dub aka Abu Dhabi this week and it turns out that the there is a Abu Dhabi Film Festival is also this week.

In the morning we all end jump into 1.0’s car and head towards A-Dub. I was driving and it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to get there from Dubai Marina. I have to say it feels good to drive again. That is one thing I have been missing about the states. Although the car was a 1.8L Civic Automatic, the feeling of being on the road again was quite good.

The commuters can be split up into two categories. The first group consists of normal people driving around the speed limit. The second group is the crazy-ass Emiratis that are speeding on the left lane tailgating, flashing their high beam, impatiently swerving back and forth. These guys are really annoying. I wanted to do some cultural exchange and introduce them to the bird. I didn’t know that at the time, but apparently giving people the bird in Dubai is illegal.

A-Dub is a more family oriented city. There is less glitz and glamour but roughly the same atmosphere. I visited the gold mosque which was impressive and it was free to check out. People were still installing parts of the carpet when I was visited. The outside was still being landscaped.

The rest of A-Dub wasn’t really all that impressing. I went with a friend to check out the UAE culture center. Needless to say there wasn’t much there and felt really fake.

That night 2.0 got us tickets to see a movie at the film festival. It was to take place at the main mall at A-Dub. The only other film festival I had experienced was the Cannes Film Festival in Nice. The A-Dub film festival was much less important. It didn’t feel like an actual film festival. We all got tickets to see Vicky some Barcelona. Each scene of the movie reminded me of the time I spent in Barcelona and reminded me how unique the Gaudi architecture is as I was instantly able to recognize each location. The movie was pretty good too. Scarlet and Penelope Cruz had several pashing sessions, that’s how Aussies say ‘making out’.

Nancy and I went to Atlantis today. I had seen a discovery channel episode, oh how I miss the discovery channel, about the Atlantis water resort in the Bahamas. They just opened this clone resort here in the Middle East. It is located near the base of one of the Palm Jumeirah off shore islands. The main attraction of this resort is a giant salt water aquarium. They have two whale sharks in this tank. It was impressive and sad at the same time. These two whale sharks are both babies too.

This morning I took public bus ride from Al Quais to Dubai marina. It took almost 4hrs. By car this journey is no more than 45min to an hour. The bus stops are supposedly air-conditioned but the one I am waiting at is not. The clientele of the buses are purely Indians and Filipinos. By the time we arrive at Diera, most of the Indians get off. By the time we get past Bur Dubai, most of Filipinos are gone. By the time the bus gets to Dubai Marina area the bus is almost empty.

Dubai marina is a posh part of town. Everything is new and expensive. The marina is full of expensive yachts and is surrounded by tall skyscraper apartments. I get off at a stop that is close to the giant GH building that Nancy told me to look for and trek across a construction site. All the roads in the area are lined with orange construction barricades and I have jump over several blockades to get to the entrance of the Iris Blue building. I bet a backpacker walking around in the Dubai Marina area is almost as awkward of a scene as it can get.

I am greeted at the font by a Filipino security that makes me sign in. I take the lift up to the 15th floor to Nancy’s 1bdrm apt. Nancy happens to have another friend staying over. Ashleigh is doing a modeling gig over in Abu Dhabi, another Emirate. We ended up checking out the Buddha bar that is directly across from her building. The drinks run around 50 UAE dirhams each which is about 14 USD.