“Hey, let’s go to Dubai for a holiday! I’ll ask other people if they would like to go too!” an old friend suggested last month.
He was bored of his Malaysian lifestyle: wake up, work, office drama, go home, eat, sleep- again and again… and again… and the occasional visits to the local pubs and clubs to momentarily escape reality. If possible, he’d probably even wish for a genie in a bottle to magically appear and immediately take care of life’s worries for good… while in Dubai, maybe.
It's almost as though Dubai is capable of solving everyone's many dilemmas.
Picture above: Dubai showroom promoting the lifestyle and future of Dubai: "This is THE place you'd want to be in, darlings. Look no further..."
Picture above: Dubai taxi driver. Obviously left-handed. Has the ability to drive and use a handphone simultaneously. Safety belt, optional (no kidding).
I was a bit skeptical about that trip and THAT place, as I had been these past few years while many other friends kept enthusing about how great it’d be for them to go work in Dubai, make some money, enjoy life over there and then come home many times richer.
Picture above: Like some kind of a pretty lady tempting you with sickly sweet promises, Dubai does the same to many people too.
Picture above: A hotel with too many towels to give away.
My skepticism and concern was never openly mentioned. I never dared to share my thoughts with anyone on how Dubai kept reminding me of the Tower of Babel in case anyone started to label me a killjoy.
Many great ancient civilizations had come and gone for the past many centuries. Almost all would show traces of Man’s attempts to achieve greatness and leave behind great legacies.
When these massive ancient structures were completed, only the names of Qin Shi Huang, Pachachuti, Khufu and Khafre made it into history books.
The rest of those who worked long hours for the big bosses, well… you get the idea…
The human mindset has not changed much these past many centuries. In fact, not at all…
“How I wish I could go to Dubai to work. Maybe I should,” an engineer friend commented last year.
“You serious? I just think Dubai’s being developed too quickly. Everything’s happening too overwhelmingly fast… it’s almost surreal…” I casually mentioned.
Strange things can sometimes happen to anybody or anything that’s been forced to develop too quickly… like a rubber-band stretched beyond its capacity…
And don’t forget Dubai’s actually a scorching desert that’s not habitable to most living things. In order to maintain its glorious splendour in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. “going against nature”), that would require a lot of hard work, time and money… just like the person in the picture below… but how long could this go on?
I didn’t go on to ask about how my engineer friend could manage to find any support group over there should anything go wrong as she’d be there by herself; in a city built from nothing; a shiny, shimmery paradise where strangers swoop in from everywhere with hopes of making it big, have some fun and then leave. It’s not as simple as that. You’d have to be an emotionless shell of a human to be able to jump into such an environment; work your guts out; attempt to have some so-called harmless, temporal dalliances; and then quickly get out.
“I wanna make some money and enjoy the lifestyle over there”- sounds more like chasing some kind of an elusive dream to fulfill some kind of void within one’s soul…
Picture above: Welcome to Dubai.
It’s the fancy-free lifestyle that many tend to dream about in their not-so-amazing daily lives. And many thought they could obtain all those shiny, glittery baubles of joy in a particularly picturesque man-made oasis.
Ever heard of the "Screensaver Effect" before? Well, I made it up just a few seconds ago.
Note to friend: No, I’m sorry Dubai has to wait. You’re better off spending your holiday season at the local orphanage, dressed up as Santa Claus and bringing joy to little kids, rather than chasing foreign chicks in the middle of a desert. You’d need to have a much bigger bank account than what you now have to be able to catch up with those foreign chicks- otherwise, you'd have to settle for camels... and I'm not trying to be funny.
On the soft wind of the Nadq
Came fragrance of Araar
Splendor of a thousand suns shone glory in my path
Arabian nights
Like Arabian days
More often than not
Are hotter than hot
In a lot of good ways
Picture above: Porter at work.
Here's a little story that I’ve been rereading these past few months, and has become quite popular recently… So much more interesting than Scheherazade's 1,000 Arabian tales to one totally twisted king.
screensaver = a program that displays a constantly shifting pattern on a screen when the computer is idle, originally used to prevent damage to the screen through continuous display of the same image but now used primarily for decoration.
6 comments:
nice place to visit
A smile from SJ =)
Hey, Sue Jean's back! :)
Dubai looks like a nice place to visit, but not settle in, I think ;)
Hope exam was fun!! *cough*
I wanna visit Dubai so much to stay in the Burj Al Arab:)
Go ahead. Chance of a lifetime. Sure there'll be loads of nice pics to be taken there :)
no to do-buy!
wow. very strong comments. i think we should set up a "no to do-buy" club, hehe.
Post a Comment