12:36 AM
hampton
After a curiously long time of no posts, I have returned with the Dubai-inspired, "World's Greatest Post." You might say that I've been caught up in the magic of the city, the splendor of the sights, the enchantment of the Emirates...
...or I'm taking an opportunity to discuss my run in with Emirati spin. (My money's on the latter.)
After last Thursday's docking, Scott and I had an opportunity to meet up with his friend Andrea who is a flight attendant for a major airline. She lives right in the middle of the new "downtown" Dubai, a complex that includes apartments, high rises, the Dubai Mall, and the Emirate's crown jewel, the Burj Dubai, er... Khalifa.
The sun was setting when we arrived at her 33rd floor apartment. After Scott and Andrea caught up, Andrea took me to see the pool and health club. The real sight wasn't the health club, of course, but the view from the pool that overlooks Dubai. As I was lining up the shot, this building plopped into my viewfinder:
The Burj Khalifa is the World's Tallest Building, surging 2,717 feet (828 meters) into the Dubai skyline. The tower complex took six years to build.
I had seen the Burj Khalifa from a distance everyday while at Al Jadaf. However, the desert winds leave a certain amount of sand and dust in the air, so I had not seen it so clearly. I stood there in the cool night breeze in awe of the engineering. This building is a less than 200 meters short of a kilometer, and yet, there it stands. The juxtaposition of the tower and moon was an odd sight. The whole scene was mystical.
Well, it was until Andrea broke the silence with her experience of living in Dubai close to the construction site. Really, that in itself is nothing. All of Dubai is a construction site. You either live at one, next to one, or are being forced to move so that one can break ground. Getting around the residential high rises is a challenge because the roads change so often. Andrea's apartment is located directly off of Sheik Zayed Road, a major thoroughfare in Dubai. Yet, the exit off of Sheik Zayed is dirt, and the roads around her high rise are dirt. Scott said that every time he visits her there is a different dirt path to the entrance of the tower.
After the first of what would be several laments, Andrea wanted to go to the organic market at Dubai Mall. We set off on our journey to the next superlative, the World's Largest Mall. I've heard of people joking about getting lost in a stadium parking lot, but the mall's car park was nothing short of disorienting. The only helpful feature was the small light over each parking spot that indicated if it was vacant or occupied. Similarly, signs indicated the number of vacant spots in each section of the garage. We were parked in the W section. Yes, there are 26 sections on three floors.
For Thursday night, the Mall was jumping. Often the Emirati are like ants. This effect is amplified when you combine tourists and locals at the Dubai Mall. The mall has four floors and over 12.1 million square feet (1.12 square kilometers) of retail space. We walked around for a bit before Scott decided to show me two more superlatives. Our first stop was the World's Largest Aquarium -- primely placed inside the Mall, mind you. The Dubai Mall Aquarium has an acrylic viewing window that is 32.88m wide x 8.3 m high x 750 mm thick weighing almost 645,000 kg. Over 33,000 fish live in the Dubai Mall Aquarium including Scott's favorite, the leopard shark.
I'm almost hesitant to take the picture for fear of the 10 million liters of water to come crashing down on me.
Just to sweeten things up, the World's Largest Candy Store can be seen in the reflection of the aquarium window. I would have taken a direct picture of Candylicious, but the store doesn't allow photography.
We're almost through our list of superlatives, but I'm sure you can see why this is the World's Greatest Post. I have joked with a few people that there is a line on the Dubai building permit application that requires the contractor to declare a superlative. If your construction project can't be declared the world's (superlative) something, then it gets denied. Dubai is arguably much more flashy and opulent than its neighboring emirates Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. Dubai's quest to be the superlative capital of the world has come at quite a cost. Besides the well publicized meltdown that occurred here in late 2009, it seems that there is no end to the number of available properties for lease. An unspoken superlative in Dubai might be "World's Largest Number of Vacancies." Indeed, when the finally settles in the UAE, one unrivaled superlative may hang in the air forever: "World's Grandest Folly."
But back on the romantic kick, the night ended with a trip to the Dubai Fountain, the "World's Largest Fountain" with the "World's Tallest Fountain Plumes" at the base of the "World's Tallest Building" and adjacent to the "World's Largest Mall." No where else can you be within range of five monumental superlatives at once. The Dubai Fountain usurped the superlative from the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas. The water jets can fire plumes as high as 492 feet or 150 meters, a fifth of the height of Burj Khalifa. The Fountain performs 14 music and light shows each night synchronized with a fantastic water display.
The Dubai Fountain is longer than two football fields and cost over $218 million.
As the fountain show ended and we headed back for the car (Do you remember where we parked??), I realized that for a fleeting moment I had been caught by the allure of the Emirates. Standing below the base of the Burj Khalifa, gazing back over at the Dubai Mall and its Aquarium, feeling the rush of the fountain water falling back down to the crowd, I thought that I could live like this. This fairy tale world created from sand could make a great home...
Then the moment passed with a sigh of relief. For Dubai isn't quite a fairy tale world. Someone forgot to add the "Happily Ever After."
A photograph from the base of the Burj Khalifa.
Posted in:
0 comments:
Post a Comment