bad poetry, bureacratic nonsense....
maybe the sheikh will get strangled by his own lower intestine
Apple is planning to build the world's biggest iStore in Dubai - marking the first time it has opened a retail store in the Middle East. The fruity firm is looking for 26 categories of iToilers to work in the United Arab Emirates. Some 13 of these positions are for jobs in the new store. Cupertino wants to recruit everything …
Dubai's a weird place. It's a city built by people who don't really have any concept of anything bigger than a fishing village, and it shows. I remember it took me forever to figure out what the road system was about until my boss-at-the-time (a close relative of Sheikh Mo's) had me accompany him by helicopter and I got an aerial view of the place. Then it became clear - it's an F1 track with a city in it. I'd be very surprised indeed if something like the Monaco GP didn't eventually happen there.
As for the rest - immense buildings just because. Soaring wealth and grinding poverty (imported Pakistani workers, for the most part) literally yards apart. Ostentatious water fountains in a place where tapwater is literally more expensive than petrol. Crazy shopping because money is big here but taste hasn't made it that far yet.
It's a place where all the fun things are banned by law so spending ludicrous amounts of money on nothing worthwhile replaces them.
As such, I expect Apple to do very well there. Vertu, Rolex and Hugo Boss do.
Yeeeessss, but...
It's all fun and games until it isn't, and it can turn in a heartbeat. http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-21783589 for instance. Imagine your wife's just died on honeymoon and the police arrest you for having been drinking when you show up to report it. Ex pat residents can get a legal permit to drink, but it can take years. Visitors cannot. If you delve into the notoriously poorly documented statute of the country, those hotel bars are serving illegally of they don't check your drinking licence. Of course they don't - powerful families own the hotels and the place is powered by hypocrisy, but the police like to show their power now and again.
Prostitution is rife in a country which is 75% male, but as much as it is blatant in places, the results can be quite severe without the big hotel owners to back people up behind the scenes.
Drugs, you'd be a first class fucking idiot to go near them, but I know they are available. A German air hostess went to the police to complain that she had been 'spiked' with a hashish sweet, was given a blood test, and spent 4 months in prison awaiting trial - for being the victim.
Yes, shit goes on and yes most people get away with it most of the time, but don't for a second let your guard down, you'll find how quickly that liberty was mere tolerance of your decadent western ways and money and catch the rough edge of the place. Dubai hasn't got oil worth speaking of (Abu Dhabi has it all, pretty much), it depends on tourism, it depends in this image, but hypocrisy is absolutely running through the creek.
When I was there, I thought the Arabs would be the biggest offenders for that kind of thing but oddly, they're not. I think they're losing the "nouveau riche" thing, or maybe it rubs away slowly over time.
The absolute worst examples of terrible taste are usually worn by the "wives" of Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese visiting businessmen.
The authors real knowledge of Dubai seems based on the few nasty articles about it in the West over the past few years, couched in the language of propaganda and probably motivated by people who hate or cant understand the idea of any Arabs ever doing any good. Dubai is an oasis of tolerance compared to the majority of the Arab world. London and New York would have been money grubbing and born out of cheap labour so the hypocrisy is rank.