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December 20, 2004
Lounsbury on Dubai: Various random degenerate observations
To open, I note I have a bit of a fever, having caught cold while travelling over the past week (the sick bastard coughing next to me hardly helped) and so I can not be held entirely responsible for the following. I also can not compare my comments to the more in depth, artful and sustained comments our dear Istara makes, as of course she lives there, but a few comments on Dubai. Not substantive comments, just random ones.
First, in terms of flights, I must say, and this is terrible but sadly true, that I strongly advise avoiding third world originating flights to Dubai. A lot of tediousness goes on, Dubai being an el Dorado and all that. In particular the large, fat market ladies who mysteriously are able to fly to Dubai should be avoided. They feel free to bump you, physically, even wearing their viels. A normal response such as slugging them or cursing just can't be done.
Second, I've come to note that the quality of North African girls in Dubai is startinglingly poor. I am afraid to say that unlike the more fashionable home end selection, the North African (essentially Moroccan) chicks are somewhat on the dumpy side, and invariably look like low-rent interpretation of Leabanese whores. It's very strange - since Moroccan girls are actually quite fab and fashionable as a rule, but it appears Dubai attracts the lowest rent, ghetto or country types from Beni Millal and Ain Diab. Either that or I have simply been in the wrong places. Puzzling. I should have thought Dubai would attract a higher class of gold digger, since one can find (by accident of course) the same kind of .... international commercial agents in say Amman. Maybe they're getting nudged out by the Russians.
Third, one has to wonder how profitable all the leathery (largely English, largely hooliganesque) European tourists are in general. They do seem to spend. I suppose the magic words "Duty Free" seem to do it, although if one looks rationally at the prices and prices in opportunity cost, I am not convinced that Dubai is that great a deal (it's an awesome deal if you live in the region with duties runing at 100 percent). Of course the announced flights to Manchester no doubt explain all. Direct flights to Manchester.
(As an aside, it always puzzled me why the Moroccans have failed so stunningly in leveraging their own situation. Close to Europe, social mores rather looser than the Gulf's on a good day, better weather overall. Take the shitty city of Agadir. There is no reason why Agadir is not bigger in the Hedonism market. One could always import Eastern Europeans to service the more debauched Scandinavian desires, so long as they paid taxes. Offshoring.)
Fourth, there are more paunchy middle aged European men with bored looking East Asian chickies some 20 years their younger than I recall; I am guessing Dubai is winning some more of the international transit to Thialand etc. business than in the past. Why not? Still, it somewhat sticks out. Or maybe I just hit the right season?
As an aside, I recall in graduate studies being moderately contemptous of the popularity of those specializing in East Asian activities (clubs, focus groups, blah blah), somehow the sex tourism angle was always just below the surface. Now, many years later and in the Middle East, sometimes I stop and think, "Well, I was also intrigued with Portuguese"
Fifth, leading from this, I am surprised at my cultural regression of late. I used to be a literate and urbane fellow, interested in cinema, art, museums and other such foofy things. I am fast regressing. I should reflect on this, perhaps when feeling better.
Sixth, returning to baser topics, I note the number of hot sub-Contintental chickies in Dubai intrigues me, above all in direct comparison with the North African selection - admittting for the moment that origin is not always immediately obvious, but taking my observation for face value. Thank whatever I do not live in Dubai, I suspect I might end up getting in some serious situation. But then this reflects on my ongoing cultural regression. I shall soon be an empty minded idiot and disgusting old expat whanker.
Seventh: Dubai remains a strange place. Certainly one has to admit the Emirates have hit on an interesting model, and while one might ask if there is a real return on the massive amounts of capital being invested by the Emirates in Dubai and to a lesser extent Abu Dhabi. However, at least in the case of Dubai, I have to admit that it seems likely that this is a better use of the Emirates money than offshoring it in other investments or pissing it away in pure consumption. Dubai, at some level, does seem to work. I remain suspicious of it, but in many ways it is providing a free market example for the region. Let's leave aside the fact that many of the things it is doing are not directly replicable and as a model, it is about as relevant as Hong Kong is to China (which is to say relevant, but indirectly). Leaving this aside, it provides an Arab (ahem, let's abstract away from the large non-Arab professional presence in key areas) example to the rest of the region on the benefits of (reasonably) good standards (relative to rest of region - Istara, keep in mind the fucked up things you see are ever more fucked up elsewhere) and perhaps best of all, a perceived sense of (i) something Arabs (ahem) have got right, (ii) a talking model / contrast point for the rest of the region, something that is clearly working better on many levels than most of the rest of the region (monied or not).
None of this is to deny, I may add, the weirdly transparently superficial nature of Dubai society. Dubai is transience. That is clear. In the long term the varied masses are all going to go somewhere else. The Dubai Indians (and the especially hot Dubai South Indian girls.... well snapping out of my feverish reverie), the Dubai Lebanese, etc. are never going to be permanent in the sense of say North American immigrants (which is good for their home countries insofar as there is a natural transfer of capital and expertise - somewhat trivial in the sense of the Western population since they learn little, see little and are merely pampered gastarbeiteren). The question is how long does the game last? One of Dubai's problems is that unless its own hinterland progresses, develops, opens up, it can not really survive in the long term. The Hong Kong or Singapore play only really works if there is an attractive hinterland. As a mere pass through point on commerce that is passing from Asia to the West, it will be surplanted when it ceases to be able to subsidize such activities - that is when the hydrocarbons stop doping the regional economy, it had better hope that not only itself but its neighbors have gotten something right, else it will wither.
Among the key questions in looking at these questions, and I note this is looking at a 50 year time horizon- enough time that I will be quite an old man if not dead, is what is the real potential for change and "getting things right" in the region and beyond that, can the region overcome the natural handicaps, meaning water.
In short, the region, from the Maghreb to the Mashreq, faces two key binding constraints: fresh water and .. population growth, relative to opportunity especially. While I am a great believer in the ability for innovation to solve problems, and I also note that most Malthusian disaster scenarios to date have proven overblown, at the same time the sheer size and scope of the water issue in the Middle East make it hard to see a decent solution emerging. Certainly at small scales it is easy to see, but frankly it is hard to see where the investment capital (and where the returns) will come from for truly massive water reclamation projects needed in the long term to avoid system collapse in many areas where current reliance is on extracting fossil waters.
Of course, in saying this it's important to make distinctions between places in inexorable water traps (Transjordan region, Arabian Peninsula down to Yemen, Egypt to an extent, potentially Iraq) and those that are not (Lebanon, the coastal north of North Africa ex-Libya, Syria's West, the small Gulf States except of course the cauldron of KSA will boil them if it boils over).
Posted by The Lounsbury at December 20, 2004 11:40 AM
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Aug-Dec 2004
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