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October 12, 2003
Arrival in Dubai for the World Summit Awards
Hello from Dubai! It's 10:40am Dubai time, eight hours ahead of US east coast time, and I've been in the UAE for just about three hours now. My flight arrived just after sunrise this morning, wrapping up around 16 hours of flight time from DC to London to Dubai. Didn't get a wink of sleep on the flight, but at least I managed to watch Pirates of the Caribbean one and a half times along the way. I just can't get enough of Johnny Depp's Keith Richards homage, I guess.
Dubai is hot and sticky, probably pushing 95 degrees and 60 percent humidity. Even the Floridian in me finds it oppressive, and the thick layer of ozone hanging over the city certainly isn't helping things. But I'm already fascinated by the place; nothing here looks more than 10 or 20 years old, yet every storefront you pass seems to be selling the wares of the Arabian bazaars of old -- spices, perfumes, gold seem to be everywhere.
The streets are teaming with people, but it's not chaotic like Cairo or Delhi. Just lots of people going about their business -- Arabs, Africans, Indians, Chinese, Europeans. It's very easy to get around the central part of Deira, the section of Dubai that's located on the northern side of "The Creek" -- a busy waterway akin to Istanbul's Golden Horn.
I'm sitting in a public library just off the Creek in the western tip of Deira. The library looks brand spanking new, and it's giving me odd flashbacks to the library I grew up at in Melbourne Florida -- smaller, but still similar in a way I can't articulate. I'm taking advantage of their Internet lab, a quiet, well lit room with about a dozen flat-panel computers each enjoying broadband access to the Internet. As I'm not a resident of the UAE, I'm shelling out five dirhams an hour for access - just under two bucks. So far I'm connecting to everything I want to, and access to my Benton email has been a snap.
A few minutes ago a troupe of several dozen young women from a local school came by with their teachers. They were all wearing dark school uniforms and headscarves. A few of them made eye contact with me and smiled in that shy teenager kind of way; meanwhile I was totally embarassed because I was slogging through my email in-box throwing away the multitudes of porn spam that seems to find its way into my account like flies to a camel. Fortunately the font size is small enough that I doubt anyone noticed. I really have to get some decent spam filters installed at some point.
Later today I'll be figuring out how I'll spend the brief amount of free time I have over here before getting to work on the World Summit Awards nominations at Dubai Internet City. I'm contemplating a trip to Muscat, Oman, which I undestand is one of the few old cities in the Gulf (outside of Yemen, at least) that manages to maintain its historic character.
Anyway, my allotment of Internet access is whittling away, so I better log out for now. More stories from the Persian Gulf soon.... -ac
Posted by acarvin at October 12, 2003 2:55 AM
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