The Middle East @ Work

The Middle East @ Work tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97 2008-03-15T01:50:52Z Movable Type Open Source 4.1 An unclear view tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16386 2008-03-15T01:43:55Z 2008-03-15T01:50:52Z

My lasting memory of Dubai is going to be its incompleteness. Not just physically, although that for sure. But also because for all the building and booming, its place in the global economy still isn't a sure thing. Too many people here are being left behind.

more. -- Kai Ryssdal ]]> The Cultures of the Future tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16364 2008-03-14T14:51:41Z 2008-03-14T16:02:02Z

There is nothing more to dislike about Dubai, than there is to dislike about New York, London, Barcelona, Shanghai, Paris or Tokyo... Dubai is a mirror of what we all have turned the cultures of the world into.

I will have to learn how to ski one day. Just to know if I could have lied when the woman at the ski Dubai counter asked me if I knew how to ski. I said, "no, can I take a class and learn?"... "you have to take four classes"... "I don't have time for four classes"... "then you can just go into the snow park". That didn't sound like a lot of fun. But I did it anyway... I have a tendency to only work when I travel for work. So sometimes I just have to force myself to do something else. The snow park is basically a crazy place. But it doesn't feel that crazy when you are there. I have not been in a theme park but I suppose the feeling is fairly similar. The guy in charge of the toboggan didn't object to me riding it 5 times so I could get different video shots. After one hour, it became boring. Probably like any other theme park. I visited the bathroom and noticed that this very serious Asian young waiter was washing his hands. He was the waiter that helped us a couple of days ago when we had dinner at the mall. Back then, he was extremely smiley, extremely nice, in a way that made me feel it could not be fake. He was too nice to be faking it. But now at the bathroom he looks like a different person. It is not that he is not smiling (who smiles in the bathroom?) it is that he looks like he is thinking, like he is worried, like he is in the middle of a process... he looks like a musician before entering the stage, or an athlete before starting a competition. Focused, that's what it is. There is a complex story beyond the fairly well known story of these immigrants working their *** off. I could tell you what my experience as an immigrant has been in the US. But I will not. Because as much as I have tried to deconstruct it and understand it... I still think the consequences go beyond my comprehension. And the face of this young waiter in the bathroom is something I will never be able to explain completely on this paper, on a radio piece or on a video piece. It's a small window to a universe of feelings that come after we uproot ourselves. I would have loved to go up to him and say something... or just look at him with a half smile. He never looked at me. The common thing to think is that this place looks pretty much like any other place in the US. In the Persian Gulf and there is not much exotic about anything I see here. There is lots of excess. The ski slope, the luxurious hotel on a small peninsula with its 250 dollar brunch (or that's what I hear at least...), the man made islands, the sky rises, the pairs of sky rises, two here, two there, two more in construction, two about to start construction, two construction workers walking down the street under the sun. Our hotel is in what's called "knowledge city." I walk around and try to understand how one block can house three different universities. In 20 minutes I see people who could come from any place in the world. I suppose all of them have enough money to be able to attend a private university so... I can't really say that I see all types of people, but all types possible within a certain sector of the global population: the middle classes of the world, all studying in one village, in Dubai. As soon as I landed in Dubai I started a process of deciphering. I am sure every other person does. What is this place about? Why would they try to build a city like this in the middle of the desert? And why a city so similar to any other big city in the US? I feel gypped. Where are the camels? Every one here speaks English. No one is asking me for a tip and the taxis have a very fancy meter. Apparently this is not a democratic state but no one seems to care about that. It has open markets, it embraces neo liberalism so... we can easily skip the part about democracy. The same way that Scott Jagow told a store owner in Cairo "I actually want to buy something, we can skip the part about the tea and the hospitality". Democracy is the tea. If you already know you are going to buy something, who cares about the tea? I heard that some call what Dubai is doing "their legacy". Comparable to the pyramids in Egypt. History is a tricky thing. I can't really say whether they are right or wrong. I have no idea. I can't see the future. If I could I would not be writing this blog. Or maybe I would, because I don't know what the future is like. But the same way I wondered in Cairo about the authenticity hidden in the bedrooms of the locals, in their cafes, in their private conversations... I wonder in Dubai about the culture coming out of this madness. When nearly everything old is thrown away, when you create the city of the future, with people from all over the world, unapologetically undemocratic... Is there a new kind of authenticity being born here? I can't see it. I guess no one can see it. If it is happening we will only know in 20 or 50 years. But then, could it be, that Dubai will be the pioneer of the new world authenticity? One that counts on the planes, the visitors, the corporations, the globalization... the cheap labor side by side with the extreme wealth. One that does not talk about the past. There is nothing more to dislike about Dubai, than there is to dislike about New York, London, Barcelona, Shanghai, Paris or Tokyo... Dubai is a mirror of what we all have turned the cultures of the world into. -- Miguel Macias Unlucky Thirteen tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16354 2008-03-14T08:10:37Z 2008-03-14T16:49:50Z

We took a few hours off to go to the beach today. Jumeirah Beach Park costs just 5 dirhams to get in (less than $1.50), and it's beautiful. The water is swimming pool blue, and so salty you can just sit back and float with no effort. The scene is pure Dubai. European women in thong bikinis seemed right at home alongside fully-covered Arab women. Yet I saw a lifeguard tell an African man he couldn't go around in his briefs. It's easy to be lulled into thinking Dubai is just like America. Until your web search gets censored. Or...as it turns out...you try to get on the bus. I'll let Nancy pick up the story...Thanks Amy. At first, we tried to get a cab. That didn't work. It was rush hour and cabs rushed by us. Hailing a cab in Dubai is like waiting for the Cubs to win the world series---lots of hope at the beginning, impatience in the middle, and defeat at the end as you watch other teams and cabs just go by you. So Amy suggested taking the bus--a trip she made a couple days before with her husband. The bus pulled up and we waited behind an older British couple. They checked their destination with the driver. Satisfied, they paid the fare and found the last two empty seats. It was about 4:30pm. The bus was packed with men in their construction uniforms standing in the aisle. A sprinkle of women--all sitting. Amy approached the driver. And I handed him the money. I'll let Amy tell continue.... Okay, so the driver wouldn't take Nancy's money. At first we couldn't understand why. I thought maybe he didn't have change, but then noticed a whole tray full of dirham coins. But he gestured to the back of the bus and said "Ladies no stand." And it slowly dawned on us that he was saying we were not allowed to stand on the bus. And that, because all the seats were taken, we had to leave. Outraged, all I could think to say was "That is so backward!" Ridiculous, offensive...just bizarre. But the man walking onto the bus behind us confirmed--ladies no stand. So Nancy did some research...Thanks, Amy. Before I share my research, let me take a brief detour. Sorry about the pun. At least in other places in the Middle East, women have a choice--you can stand in a packed bus--sometimes uncomfortably, nestled between someone's armpits. Or you can wait for another bus with empty seats. But you have the freedom to make that decision, the freedom to decide your journey. Okay, back to the question...why? The Roads and Transport Authority of Dubai (RTA) reserves a certain number of bus seats for women. That number is 12. And all the seats are in the front of the bus. Simple math follows. If you get on a bus and there are already 12 women on that bus, your chances of staying on the bus...next to nil. If a man offers to give you his seat, well...that doesn't work either. Women can't sit in the male section. The RTA is studying the issue--and plans to increase the number of reserved seats for women on...and here's the operative phrase...certain routes. So we ended up taking a taxi, after all. Our driver didn't share our outrage. He made some comment about how lucky we were that we didn't have to walk to our destination in the afternoon sun. He laughed and laughed and laughed. Amy again. And then he proceeded to drive us the long way back to the hotel. The fare was about 30 times what it would have cost to take the bus. Guess that's what you get for being the unlucky 13th (and 14th) woman. - Nancy Farghalli and Amy Scott All Hail ... Taxi tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16286 2008-03-12T01:36:47Z 2008-03-12T01:41:09Z

One of the ironies of Dubai is that all the cab drivers live in Deira, and yet it's impossible to find a cab there. At least for a white guy who wants to go to Knowledge Village. I broke my feet walking around in circles trying to find a place where cabs might congregate. I tried the main thoroughfares first but all the traffic was whipping by too fast. I tried flagging down something that at least looked like a taxi as it waited at a stop light. I waved and waved but the driver ignored me. Finally I walked right up to his window and said, sort of desperately, "Can I get in your cab?" "My friend," the driver sternly said, "This taxi is going to Sharjah." It was a special service, I guess, serving the other emirate only. Somehow I wound my way onto a back road where there was a whole fleet of cabs waiting outside a low-end restaurant. The drivers were all dressed in traditional Bedouin garb. I tried to explain where I wanted to go -- "Knowledge Village?" I said - but they didn't seem to understand. "Deira?" said one of them, "Dubai." Like he was giving me the choice. This made no sense. Deira is IN Dubai. I just wanted to go to ANOTHER part of Dubai. I said "Dubai." He wasn't satisfied. He looked me in the eye and kind of mockingly chanted "Deira Dubai, Deira Dubai" batting his head back and forth. Then he asked one of the other drivers if he was interested in taking me. The guy shuddered at the idea. Finally, I ended up at the mall, figured there had to be a cab-stand in there somewhere. I asked three people and they all told me the same thing: go upstairs, cross the mall, then go down again and take a right. So I'd go up and cross and down and ask again because I couldn't find it. It was a dance: up, down, ask, up, down, ask. Finally I realized that I wasn't going up high enough. There was a whole other world on the third level I didn't know about. After about a half hour, and a very large ice cream cone, I found the cab line. It was long, maybe thirty or forty people. But it was moving pretty quickly and we got up to the front door and then rounded a corner and suddenly... there were four hundred other people lining both sides of a 200 foot long corridor. I waited in that line for a solid hour before I got a taxi back to the hotel. My feet still hurt. -- Sean Cole Some fun facts about Ski Dubai tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16288 2008-03-11T23:04:53Z 2008-03-12T02:15:19Z

Price: 150 dirhams (about $40) for two hours Vertical Drop: 203 feet Snow base: 6,000 tons Temperature: 28° F Time to ski from top to bottom: 25 seconds Carbon footprint: Scary...

Price: 150 dirhams (about $40) for two hours Vertical Drop: 203 feet Snow base: 6,000 tons Temperature: 28° F Time to ski from top to bottom: 25 seconds Carbon footprint: Scary The Soul of the Future tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16341 2008-03-11T15:15:53Z 2008-03-14T15:07:49Z

When we finally board in our Boeing 777 I am still trying to figure out what's odd about that situation. I go to the bathroom and only then I realize that there is a PA system playing music across the plane. Some innocuous music coming out of a movie about the future. I can't recall ever hearing any music when boarding a plane. But maybe I was just not paying attention. And why am I paying attention now?

This room has fluorescent lights, white and blue tiles on the walls. This room doesn't have a whole lot of light. If I had to guess I'd say I am in a hospital waiting room somewhere in Queens, New York. I can't find the glamour. There is something odd about this room. When we finally board in our Boeing 777 I am still trying to figure out what's odd about that situation. I go to the bathroom and only then I realize that there is a PA system playing music across the plane. Some innocuous music coming out of a movie about the future. I can't recall ever hearing any music when boarding a plane. But maybe I was just not paying attention. And why am I paying attention now? The flight from Cairo to Dubai is about three hours. Emirates is supposed to become the biggest airline in the world at some point in the near future. This plane is quite fancy. The food is quite fancy... we even get to see the plane take off on the screens across the plane. They placed a camera in the front of the plane. So you see those lights on the runway passing faster, faster, faster and finally... the stars. No one in this plane seems very surprised by this. I am so surprised, I take out the video camera and I start shooting the TV monitor. The flight attendants, who had been wearing some sort of traditional hats while we were boarding the place, now don't have any hats. And they don't look very Middle Eastern to me. They look more like... Scandinavian models. The luxury of this plane, the food, the staff... none of that fits with us, the people on the plane... regular people... Workers, visitors with not too much money, a pair of surprised public radio producers. No one seems very excited in this plane. Is this what the future will look like? A calm, somehow melancholic, un-surprised, luxurious, apathetic, melting pot? Either I am missing something big here, or the future has no soul. -- Miguel Macias From Cairo to Dubai tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16244 2008-03-10T19:03:43Z 2008-03-10T19:07:54Z

To go from Cairo to Dubai is to go from the horizontal to the vertical. The Arab sky replaces the Arab street. Skyscrapers go up like flags on a flag pole. Construction cranes are everywhere. So is the noise from jackhammers. This is a city that has never said no. It is like being invited into a brainstorming session. You are told, "Don't think about the cost or the time or the staffing needs. Just imagine what you want to do. How you would plan this project?" But, at the end of the brainstorm, practicality sets in. You take your ideas and prioritize. What can we accomplish given our limits? Dubai doesn't operate that way. They are the brainstorm. And then they execute their ideas. New coastline -- check. Seventy five skyscrapers in a four-block radius -- check. Ski slope -- check. The more impractical, the more probable it is. It feels like the grand experiment in the Middle East, the globalized city state. A professional gold rush, a place where ambition and adversity live in the same frame. Migrant workers are building the monuments that soon will become Dubai's legacy. You'll notice one big difference between Dubai and Egypt: How they talk about their history, their legacy. Unlike Egyptians, Emiratis prefer the background. You will meet lots of ex-pats who will tell you they love Dubai. They have lived there for years and yet they have never been inside an Emirati home. Egyptians will talk about the past, the pyramids. They'll point to ancient buildings as proof that the present day matters. This is what we gave to the world. In Dubai, they are inventing their history now. History is being written by those who can build, build, build. They don't have Egypt's wealth of ancient artifacts, but they do have something they consider more valuable -- family. And in a country where citizens get free housing, free college education, and free health care, you can understand why the family concept still matters. They have the time and the income to preserve their bonds. -- Nancy Farghalli A nice place to visit but . . . tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16243 2008-03-10T18:49:56Z 2008-03-10T18:53:10Z

Dubai is one of the most successful cities on the planet: brave, ambitious experimental, safe, tolerant, peace-loving and prosperous. I hated it. Or to be more precise I loved the idea of this city but hated the reality of it.... Dubai is undoubtedly impressive. A small country on the edge of a desert, with an indigenous population of only 70,000 people and with only very modest reserves of oil, the city/statelet has achieved a great deal. With intelligence and energy and mass immigration it has turned itself into an economic dynamo. Dubai has become a major business and financial center, a tourist attraction and home to some of the most valuable real estate in the Middle East. I should add that Dubai is a miracle of multiracial harmony. People from more than one 150 countries live and work there with no apparent friction. So how can you dislike a place like Dubai? Where do I begin? ... First of all, it is a terrible place to walk around. There are very few genuinely atmospheric neighborhoods. There is some iconic architecture like the hotel shaped like a sail -- the Burj Al Arab -- and the palm-shaped artificial islands. But most of the city is just crammed with skyscrapers and shopping malls, interspersed with horrendously busy highways. Also rather charmless and unnerving is the way the city is laid out -- in sectors. People are corralled according to their activities: Media City, Knowledge Village, Culture Village, Internet City and so on. Secondly, you get little sense of a real country with a national spirit and identity. This must be largely due to the fact the native-born Dubaiyans make up only 3 percent of the population. The rest are foreigners who lead largely parallel lives; this is certainly no melting pot. OK, there is apparently no friction between different ethnic groups or any serious clash of cultures but that seems to be chiefly because the different communities hardly meet or mix. Dubai feels more like a place to do business than a country -- a Marketplace! Thirdly, as a radio reporter I found this a frustrating city in which to work. There is a huge reluctance to talk -- or at least to say anything other than what a wonderful place it is. The lack of candor and openness can be laughable. I attended a corporate governance training session promoting greater openness and transparency and the organizers refused to allow it to be recorded. They said it was "confidential." The roots of this reticence probably lie in politics. Dubai is not a democracy, there is no guaranteed freedom of speech and people are particularly loathe to say anything critical about the ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum, and his government. When the "D" word (democracy) came up in conversation, several young, educated Dubaiyans told me: "We don't need it because our rulers are so wise! All in all, I'm glad I went to Dubai. It was interesting to see a place where globalization, market forces and shopping have reached some kind of peak. But it is not a place I feel any urge whatsoever to revisit. -- Stephen Beard A Glimpse tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16287 2008-03-10T15:41:51Z 2008-03-12T01:44:24Z

Up at 6:40 or so, couldn't bare the cheese/processed meat/grapefruit breakfast again so I had yogurt with frosted flakes in it. (They didn't have any granola.) Helmut Mackleburg didn't have any breakfast, just coffee. He's the General Manager of the Taj Palace Hotel in Deira -- the first and longest standing sharia-compliant hotel in Dubai. He's a large man presiding over a large place - massive ceilings (the hotel I mean), four restaurants, beauty salon, pharmacy, etc. And like the other sharia-compliant hotels I visited it had those same framed drawings of the president, the former president and the vice president of the UAE. behind the concierge desk. Most of the female guests in the lobby wore abayas. Some had their faces fully covered, tucking fork-fulls of eggs under their veils at the balcony cafe. . . . Helmut is a busy man and I had to wait for him. I was worried, as I'd told the cab driver to come back at exactly 11:20 so I could get to my noon appointment at Dubai Healthcare City. But it was worth the wait. Helmut is as warm and insightful as he is enormous - a German guy who converted to Islam in order to get married, a self-professed student of history and geopolitics who talked as much off tape about various global issues as he did on tape about his hotel. The Taj Hotel was the first five-star sharia-compliant hotel in Dubai. It's been there seven years. And now there are other brands - Tamani, Shaza, Almulla - that are or will be following in its footsteps. "Just being sharia-compliant doesn't mean that you are going to be full," Helmut said, "You have to have the standards you have to have the service. You have to do the same thing that other hotels do. Eventually even a little bit better because you're under the... how do you call it? The viewfinder." I asked Helmut if he there were any guests he knew of who would want to talk about why they stay at his hotel or hotels like it. He paused for a moment and thought, then called for his receptionist. She was in the room in moments. "Get Mr. Kanani on the line, yeah?" he said. A few minutes later the phone rang. And after some brief words he led me downstairs, saying "This is the kind of relationship we have with our guests." Shams Kanani was sitting on one of the plush couches in the lobby. He's Kenyan, handsome with a trimmed back beard and wearing a long black dishdasha. He and Helmut greeted each other with easy affection, touching cheeks and almost whispering their hellos. As it happened, Kanani was the first ever guest of the Taj Hotel in Dubai. And he's been staying there every since. "When I heard that this Taj is going to be slightly different in the sense that it's going to be... sharia-compliant... I immediately came here to see it," he said, "I'm sure you must have noticed that when you entered the lobby here. You will see that most of the ladies who are here..." he interrupted himself and started again. "Dubai has now unfortunately become a center for illicit business. But when you come here you will see that you will not find any of those type of women around and we feel at home that it is like a... family hotel. You can bring in your family." After a few more questions I raced out of there to meet my driver, and spent the next few hours at Dubai Healthcare City, part of which was spent trying to convince a construction company to let me photograph an enormous hole in the ground. (You have to go through the proper channels, they said.) From there I rode to the offices of Damac, which bills itself as the largest master developer in the Middle East. My meeting was at 5:00 PM. I was an hour and a half early. I got a coffee at the Starbucks next door and collapsed into a comfy chair on the second level, forcing myself to come up with questions for Damac CEO Peter Riddoch. But my mind kept wandering to the sharia-compliant hotel story, and to how the Arab world is changing, as evidenced by Dubai. A friend tells me the leader of Saudi Arabia is planning on building seven Dubais, and that young people in Saudi are now driving up and down the street, messaging each other on their Bluetooth phones in order to date. In Dubai, I saw a woman who had her pony-tail sticking out of the back of her hijab. I met a Saudi man who wishes his wife wouldn't wear the veil, but she chooses to anyway. I saw a woman marching around an important Saudi sheikh's office with her abaya completely open and off of her head, revealing a gray sweatshirt and jeans. (Why she still had the abaya on at all I have no idea.) I saw a white woman in tight pants with her head covered. There is every iteration of Islamic observance here. There is NONE and there is FULL but, mostly, there are a billion shades of gray in between. And I was thinking about all of this when Frank Sinatra began to croon through the ceiling speakers of that Starbucks in Dubai, "In olden days a glimpse of stockin' / was looked on as something shockin' / Now, heaven knows / anything goes." -- Sean Cole The New Saturday tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16285 2008-03-10T15:34:00Z 2008-03-12T01:35:12Z

Strangely, a Dubai DJ will play Sean Paul and The Proclaimers right next to each other. I don't know where in the city we were but the club was called "Rock Bottom." And it was. White people paid 40 Dh for a blue drink called a "Bull-frog." Main ingredient: Red Bull. And by "white people" I mean me. Barely an Arab there tonight except one man who told me his cousin lives in Minnesota. One of the new American friends I was with hails from Minneapolis. Small, small world tinted with blue food-coloring. Yes it's the weekend but I still felt like I should be doing some work. Time here is so limited and you feel uneasy taking a day off. Tamara, our "fixer" and photographer, felt the same way. So around 1:30, she picked me up and drove us over to Crestview 1: the apartment complex that Reza Mamati invested in. Reza is a voice-over IP entrepreneur from Iran, one of many expats here who buy property "off-plan" which basically means "before it's built." But as opposed to a lot of investors, Reza was planning to live in the two-bedroom apartment he bought. So when the building took a year longer than expected to hand over, he was more than a little frustrated. Here he was, a homeowner, paying monthly interest on a home loan, AND paying rent on a tiny studio into which he'd crammed himself and his wife. If it was just an investment, he told me, that would be one thing. After all, the apartment appreciated between 30 and 50 percent while he waited for it. But that made no difference to him. "I have nothing to be proud of!" he said, " I don't give a damn about that 30 percent!" I presented this case to the developers of the building Mazyood Giga International. They said the delay was out of their hands. The building was finished back in March of 2007. It's the surrounding infrastructure that's taking so long to complete. In Dubai you can build a building in a place that isn't ready to have a building in it, a shiny new dime sitting on an empty plate. And that's what this area is. Crestview 1 is one of 79 residential towers that will make up Jumeirah Lakes Towers one day. All around it are partly-done skeletons of buildings, as well as ditches, scaffolding, cranes. It's not a neighborhood. Theres a whole sale jewelry company there, and a road that's almost impossible to navigate back to to the fundamental city, and that's it. All I wanted today, though, was some construction noise. I wandered over to one of the half-built buildings but couldn't seem to get good hammering sounds. As I was testing different locations, an Indian guy in a hard hat walked up to me and pointed at the security office, basically saying -- "Buddy, if you need something, go ask them." So I did. Three people immediately jumped on the case, walkie-talkie-ing the general foreman who told me of course it was okay to record in the building. "John was here before," he said, thinking, I guess, that all white people with microphones are from the same place - a fair assumption, I guess. I'd never been in apartment building that wasn't finished before. The stairs were raw cement, sort of rough at the edges. I wore my thighs out climbing up and down them, occasionally stumbling on pipes piled up on a landing. This constant "BANG! BANG!" sound kept calling me higher into the building but I couldn't seem to get to it. Now and then I'd greet a very surprised worker on the steps. Some were more non-plussed than others. Some stopped me and asked where I was from. Others just smiled and sweetly said "salaam aliekum" and kept walking. From there, Tamara took me out for the Pakistani food I've ever had (largely because it was the only Pakistani food I'd ever had). Then I got a cab to Souk Madinat Jumeirah - kitschy tchochke shops and rug stores - where I met up with two new American friends. We began the evening with Tikka Puka Puka's at Trader Vic's (yes, they have one of those here too), ended it at Rock Bottom where my hearing was probably damaged by Sean Paul and Proclaimers songs played so loudly you could feel them thumping in your torso like a second heart. -- Sean Cole Old and New Dubai tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16284 2008-03-10T15:24:33Z 2008-03-12T01:32:12Z

After a few days I finally made it down to Dubai Creek. Most of the Dubai I'd seen thus far was still under construction and almost wholly unwalkable. But Deira, sometimes called "the heart of the city," is a much more lived-in area by the water - boats packed with tourists slipping past the skyscrapers. A boat pilot came up to me and tried to hand me a brochure. He was speaking English but I couldn't make out any of the words except "boat," "go" and "okay." He wanted to take me on the water but I had to interview Tamsin Sherifa Madgwick at the Sheik Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding. . . . Sherifa's wonderful. She's 39, English , been in Dubai for 17 years, divorced from an Emirati man, has at least one kid. She's also a convert to Islam, wears a hijab and is aware that a lot of people think Islamic women are very reserved and closed. But they aren't, she says, and she's proof, a wonderfully talkative open book. First, she showed me around the center which is this ancient looking mosque-like place with high ceilings and low door-jambs. And then we sat on a cushiony bench which happened to be at floor level and chatted for about an hour. Sherifa loves Dubai but misses the old Dubai. The more rural, deserted place it was where you got somewhere by off-roading in a jeep because there weren't many roads to begin with. I asked her about health care here and she said it's been relatively good as long as she can remember. She gave birth at the American hospital. Her mom had a tumor out here and everything went smoothly. Some people will still want to go elsewhere for heath care, she says, either because they have a relationship with their doctors back home or because they're terminally ill and want to go home to die. But one day, she says, there will be no reason to leave Dubai. You'll be able to get absolutely anything you could ask for here: quality care, quality education, a building that doesn't leak. It's a city that's still becoming a city, so there are teething problems. But it's working itself out and, anyway, there are problems everywhere. I also finally experienced my first Dubai interview cancellation. (I guess this is something that happens a lot here.) My cell phone rang during the Sherifa interview so I switched it off quickly without answering it. Sadly it was Mona Sayed at Shuaa Capital trying to postpone my meeting with Walid Shihabi. Apparently, he'd been up working until 8:00 in the morning and was totally exhausted. But, since I missed the call, I didn't know any of this. So I went to the office anyway. It's the massive blocky archway of the Financial Centre. Two digital stock tickers greet you as you walk up the path to the revolving door. I traded in my license for a digital keycard that gave me access to the pristine steel elevators. I sat in the waiting room for twenty minutes until a very nice man with an untucked shirt and suit jacket on came out and introduced himself as the chief economist. (Surprisingly, everyone seems to dress down in these big financial centers here. I was in a tie and blazer with slacks and a nice shirt and I was way over-dressed.) He explained the situation and apologized, said Mona wouldn't be back until after lunch and to call her then. Crossed the road to Emirates Towers. Had a Starbucks. Tasted just like it always does. A very sweet Egyptian cab driver drove me back to my hotel. He was in a through lane outside Emirates Towers so he actually didn't stop, just slowed down enough for me to jump in. In broken English he asked how long I've been here and what I think of Dubai, was surprised that I'd only been here a week. Too little time, he said, for so much to see. We ran out of things to talk about pretty quickly and rode the rest of the way listening to the Muslim prayers on his radio. But every now and then, out of nowhere, he'd pipe up and say "Welcome, boss!" -- Sean Cole First Days tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16283 2008-03-10T15:11:48Z 2008-03-12T01:24:20Z

The problem with foreign reporting trips is that you only have a limited window of time to get everything you need. So if something unforeseen happens that limits your time even more, you start to panic a little. (Of course, I tend to panic a lot over everything. Enough said.)

I landed in Dubai on a Saturday, which is the new Sunday. That is, the work week here begins on Sunday, which makes it the new Monday. Thursday is the new Friday. It's hard to get used to. The problem with foreign reporting trips is that you only have a limited window of time to get everything you need. So if something unforeseen happens that limits your time even more, you start to panic a little. (Of course, I tend to panic a lot over everything. Enough said.) ... My first full day here went well - had lunch with a former Marketplace "fixer" who gave me some good advice - met with the key person in my "Disappointed Expats" story who drove me around the city some. He even took me onto Palm Jumeirah, the island shaped like a palm frond, one of three that will eventually pave the shallow waters here. And that night, Matthias Letson, from the "American Expats" story, took me out to Johnny Rockets. "They have a Johnny Rockets here?" I asked incredulously. "They have four," he said. Men in dishdasha tore into their Smoke House barbecue-burgers. A fleet of South Asian waiters smiled so broadly at us you thought their jaws would unhinge. My second full day here however did not go so well. This was the day that President Bush visited Dubai. Now, I don't know which government, ours or there's, thought it would be a good idea to close every major road in the city to allow Bush unheard-of traffic-free egress. All I know is that at about 9:30 Sunday night, while I was interviewing Matthias at the hotel, a Holiday Inn Express employee handed me this letter: "Dear Guest, Please be advised that due to the State Visit of US President George W Bush, there will be major road closures on Monday January 14th 2008and the day has been declared a Public holiday. The following roads will be closed to traffic from 6am to 5pm: 1. Al Khail Road - Closed 2. Sheikh Zayed Road - Closed from Salik point to Salik point (Gharhoud Bridge to Mall of the Emriates) 3. Jumeirah Beach Road - Closed from Al Thanya to Jumeirah Corporate office (far side of Madinat) 4. Al Wasl closed from Al Thanya to Dubai Police Office These closures will caused severe delays and traffic congestions, so please allow plenty of extra time for all trips, especially to the airport." A public holiday. No work. No work means no one going to his and her offices which means no one would be interviewable by me until the following day. One less day, in an already limited number of days, to get what I need. My "fixer" Tamara called me and said I shouldn't even try getting anywhere until 6:00 PM, that I wouldn't make it. But a lot of people tried to get to work anyway. And according to Tuesday's Gulf News, the gridlock was epic. Some people were stuck sitting in their cars for six and seven hours. The police were apparently very nice but not very competent. One guy had been planning for months to drive his girlfriend down this lovely sandy road in Dubai on January 14th and propose to her. The result was a perfect nightmare, not only because of the traffic snarls but because she was allergic to sand. The article didn't say whether she accepted. Then the rains came. The following two days reportedly pushed Dubai into the wettest January it had seen in twenty years. A moment to explain this: everyone I talked to - whether they've been here three years or thirty - tells me that they'd never seen weather this bad for this long. All the roads flooded. All the schools closed for the rest of the week because people simply could not get to them. A breakfast meeting I'd been planning to attend since before I left was cancelled. In one day, 584 traffic accidents were reported in Dubai alone. Gulf News ran articles with headlines like "How to stay safe while driving in the rain" and "'999 is for emergencies only' warn Dubai Police." Photographs of people kayaking down the street, of writing melting off of signs, were splashed across a special section devoted to the weather. At one point, over breakfast, I peered through the gauzy curtain at a wide expanse of twinkling water. I had no idea that the hotel was on a pond. It wasn't. When I pulled the curtain aside, there was just a construction ditch filled with rain. So I went from day in which it was impossible to get anywhere, to several days in which it was impossible to get anywhere. Even catching a cab was an exercise in hip-waders. After interviewing a business manager at MBC in Media City I ran up and down the parking lot, stepping in and out of kiddie-pools before I waved this one taxi down. We passed a crash site en route to the Hotel Ibis. The driver said he didn't understand why people speed in this weather. "More fast more killing," he said shaking his head. He then proceeded to race forward whenever he could. The road to the hotel was blocked. So we did a U-turn to get there from another direction. That road was blocked too. I had to get out and find my way on foot. -- Sean Cole It's the Holiday Inn Express, next to Knowledge Village. tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16225 2008-03-10T13:23:43Z 2008-03-10T16:23:24Z

First of all, greetings from Dubai. If you've never been here, if you have, or even if you don't think you'll ever come, this is a place you ought to know about. More about this when the show hits the air later today. Second, yes, we're staying in a Holiday Inn. This is public radio, you know. (Technically, it's 'Express, by Holiday Inn' which makes me think it's a franchised-out sub-brand or something.) Still, it's clean and has a free continental breakfast, so it works fine for us. Finally, and the real reason I'm writing, Knowledge Village. is a little village -- a condo complex, really -- that's home to dozens of what are called 'educational entities.' Just a partial list is enough to make your head spin. There's the University of Wollongong in Dubai, Saint-Petersburg State University of Engineering and Economics, The British University in Dubai, and Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology. Should you be so inclined, you could study online at Syrian Virtual University, or good old University of Phoenix. There are trade schools, too, like the In the Mix Audio Training Institute and my personal favorite, the International Institute of Coffee and Barista Training. And yes, there is a Starbucks right around the corner. Seriously. But...why? Why are all these companies here? One word. Well, two. Free Zones. As in Tax Free Zones. The government of Dubai has set up dozens of them all across the city as a way to grow and encourage investment. Come, it says, spend your money. Pay. No. Taxes. Education is a business, too, so what's a company to do? Especially when there's a huge potential student body across this region, from other countries in the Middle East all the way to Bangladesh. Remember that phrase -- Tax Free Zones. You'll be hearing it again this week. -- Kai]]> Cab Driver Econ tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16218 2008-03-10T10:40:17Z 2008-03-10T10:47:06Z

If you don't have a car in Dubai, you can spend half your life in a cab. So I've gotten to know a few drivers since I arrived last week. Most come from India or Pakistan. One of them, John,...

If you don't have a car in Dubai, you can spend half your life in a cab. So I've gotten to know a few drivers since I arrived last week. Most come from India or Pakistan. One of them, John, is an electrician by training. He's from Kerala, in southwestern India. When he arrived here 8 years ago, he says his rent was 70 dirhams a month. That's about 19 US dollars. Sounds cheap, but consider he was sharing that one room apartment with three other people. Today? That same room costs him 650 dirhams ($177). Everybody you talk to here complains about inflation. It's gotten so bad, the Gulf States are holding a summit later this month. The UAE just announced price caps on staples like eggs, rice, and water. At the same time, my taxi driver, John, says he's making less money. As traffic gets worse, he has fewer fares. It now costs him about $25 to fill up with gas. Again, sounds cheap to Americans, but that's more than twice what he was paying just a year ago. And John used to have his cab for 24 hours...so he could work as long as he wanted. Often 16 hours at a time. But a few months back regulators switched to a shift system. Now, he has to surrender his car to another driver after 12 hours. Better for his health, perhaps. But now he can't work enough to offset the rise in costs. So...when his contract expires in January, John plans to head back to his family in Kerala. He hopes to open his own electrical shop. A Secret Union tag:www.publicradio.org,2008:/columns/marketplace/middleeast//97.16269 2008-03-09T16:31:10Z 2008-03-12T08:17:19Z

Cairo is a wonderful place. But Cairo is filled with people looking for a tip. A 2% tip, a 50% tip, a one hundred percent tip... there is only one rule... if you are visiting Cairo you have to sign a tacit agreement, to give tips. Unless you want to leave this place feeling like a miserable human being. There is no HR department, no. But there is a secret union, the one that makes a lot of people in Cairo ask for a tip in a way that makes you feel that this is not a choice.

As I finish washing my face, I see out of the corner of my eye someone standing right by me. About one foot away from me. Or at least that's what it feels like. As I turn around, a paper towel is right in front of my hands. I see the paper towel dispenser on the wall, and I learned to take care of myself pretty early in my life so I'd sort of rather pick up the paper towel myself. But this nice man is standing between me and the paper towel dispenser. And he's got a paper towel right in front of my hands. There is no way to say no without feeling terribly rude, or mean, or a combination of rude, mean and un-understanding. There is something to understand in this situation. ... As I take the paper towel the nice man ducks his head and moves a stack of bills in front of his forehead. You can tell he has done this movement thousands of times. I reach into my wallet and take out a pound. I give it to him. I exit the bathroom wondering if I should have given him more. This nice man works for a luxury hotel in Cairo. I have no clue what his salary is. I hope it is a decent one. But in Cairo it appears that many, many people rely on tips. No matter whether they work for a luxury hotel or they are hustling on the streets. Tips for a service you might not have asked for. A service you might not even want. I go back to the cafe table at the lobby of the hotel where Ravi is finishing a sandwich. I start a calm rant about how inherently wrong the tipping system is. "The tipping system cannot end well. Even if a person makes a lot of money on tips. It is never a reliable income, you cannot plan your future based on tips, it makes you a servant forever, depending on the generosity of the random client that enters your bathroom that day. Who do you complain to when you don't get paid? Who is the manager here? Where is the union, the HR department, the minimum wage? What's even worse, companies are not stupid. Companies know that their employees are making money on tips. And that alone can be a justification to not raise salaries... just work for me, and you will have access to tips... tips from people who probably do have a salary, an HR department...". Cairo is a wonderful place. But Cairo is filled with people looking for a tip. A 2% tip, a 50% tip, a one hundred percent tip... there is only one rule... if you are visiting Cairo you have to sign a tacit agreement, to give tips. Unless you want to leave this place feeling like a miserable human being. There is no HR department, no. But there is a secret union, the one that makes a lot of people in Cairo ask for a tip in a way that makes you feel that this is not a choice... this is the price to pay to be able to see the place they live in. A place with history coming out of every corner. I've always wondered about the impact of tourism in millenarian cultures. I've seen tourism change my native city in Spain. And I don't like it. I liked Cairo... I just wish I could have been here before anyone could fly, before KFC, Starbucks, McDonalds, American Express, Boeing, Airbus and TGI Friday's (yes, there is a TGI Friday's on the Nile). Before anyone here knew who the presidential candidates for the U.S. Democratic party are. There must be a lot of authenticity left here. It is just hidden and locked up, the same way I would lock up the authenticity of my own city to protect it from anyone incapable of understanding it. --Miguel Macias