Eric Demay

Good news dear and patient readers. We’re getting back into it again. The next 6 weeks will be out of town in places I’ve never been to, situations I’ve never experienced. And I must say I am quite excited.

I’m heading over first to the UAE to complete a design project I have been working non-stop-long-hours since June. Though construction in well underway, we have one more month to go before it’s a wrap. And its the hardest one. I expect much running around, much wishing there were more than 24h in a day. Probably a bit swearing too. Update: Apparently, swearing in public ins’t allowed (more than frowned upon), so, I’ll diligently refrain from doing so.

But hopefully, if that all goes as planned, well, come December and I’ll be skipping over by France for necessary some time-out with friends and family before coming back to Montreal.

Though Dubai will probably be quite un-vacations like, I’ll do my best to blog as rigorously as I was earlier this year while in China, posting photographs with semi-elaborate captions, giving enough context for you kids to follow.

I’m there, in the oasis. Still trying it on, seeing how it fits.

One foot out of the airport towards the taxi line-up, the air, so hot and humid, hits you instantly. Sweet sweat, that feels good. The arabic signage, the luxury vehicles cars are coming and going. We’re not in Kansasada anymore and I love it. The same kind of feeling I had when leaving the airport in Beijing back in January: all is exotic, you have no clue at all where you’re heading to, but you enjoy that uncertainty because you’re there and now part of it.

Speeding on the highway, the taxi driver keeps quiet. He’s polite and answers my questions but no more. His english is not that great. He’s Egyptian, has been working in Dubai for 6 years now and loves it. Not like the Pakistani driver I met the next day, who only gets to see his wife and kids a few times a year back in his home country.

Looking out the window, Dubai seems so un-sophisticatedly sprawled all over the place. Gawd, is all of this for real?

I’m working on a design project in the new Burj Dubai, what is now the tallest tower in the world. It elevates to over 800m, well looking down on Tapei 101 (the previous contenter at 508m) and every other skyscraper in the world. The tower (Burj is tower in arabic) is the central piece of a new development which also regroups a slew of residential towers, hotels, business and commercial spaces. To get to work every morning, I’m walking through what is the largest mall in the world.

Access to the construction site is obviously limited and for security and safety reasons, they do their best to keep a tight control on who is coming in and out. And so, to get your access badge, you must pass the infamous safety induction. Pum pum puuum.

After much paperwork (by the way, Indians—to which the English have colonially bestowed their their oh-so-popular bureaucracy system—are running the show), you sit through a two hours class with other staff and workers of all kinds while regulations and safety procedures are being recited, both in English and either Punjabi or Hindi (I couldn’t make it out).

I loved the cardboard models and props they had made for different subjects. We learned where to gather at assembly points throughout the tower, how to extinguish a fire and ask for a permit to use a working platform. Thril-ling. Though I’m arriving on the scene quite late in the project (the tower is opening in a matter of months), this “show” has been running since the beginning of the construction in 2004.

Finally got to see up close the most iconic construction ever erected in Dubai. The Burj Al Arab —Tower of the Arabs in arabic— hotel, which is set 300m of the coast, was the coup d’envoi to internationally brand Dubai as a luxury tourism destination. Its mere shape and size (the tallest hotel in the world at the time), combined with a few good publicity stunts (remember Agassi and Federer exchanging volleys on the perched helipad) helped it assert the new direction of the Dubai’s contemporary development .

Anyways. Yesterday we went dancing at the outdoor club/balcony/pod that sits next to it. Pounding electro-dub, with a side of rich loud Lebanese kids going at it. Like Montreal’s picnik electronik but infused with this kitschy jet-set cliché vibe to it. But nobody seemed to care, everybody was enjoying the setting all too much.

Dubai is fortunately not all skyscrapers and malls, overpriced lattés and Land Rovers.

Yearning for a break from the oh-so-quite-beautifully-orchestrated-but-yet-so-sterilized oasis I’m residing and working in, I went out for a long day’s walk in Deira, one of Dubai’s older neighborhoods by the creek. The region’s economy has mostly been based on trade since the spice routes, and Deira is home to both the local boat anchorage and trade community of shop keepers beneficing from the industry.

The very Maghreb like architecture and the 12 o’clock sun hitting every soul daring to walk out of the shade, I had Camus’ Stranger in mind. Though turning each corner, the street kept weirdly still: I had forgot the longer friday afternoon prayer hour, shops kept closed and locals busy inside ‘till 2 or 3 o’clock PM.

A few cues if you’re planning a stroll through Dubai’s older neighborhood. Lonely Planet’s tip to “improvise and get lost” is a good one too.

• Take every back street alley you can. Dubai is as safe as it gets, don’t be afraid to explore: the narrower and less inviting the alley is, the better the outcome. I promise. Most of the neighborhood life is hidden in these alleys, you won’t regret the catching bakers making the pita breads, the domino game.
• Walk thought the souks. If you’re in for shopping and haggling, you’ll get you’re money’s worth. But with gold, perfume and spice souks, you’ll have more than enough to gaze and smell at.
• Walk in to the most localest of local restaurant (in an alley is best) and eat whatever the locals are eating. I got a platter of chicken biryani which I ate with my hands like everyone else. Accompanied by a sweet pudding-like dessert, it was all so deliciously authentic.
• Drink tea on the street an evening long. We had lamb kadai with oversized naan bread, then simply kept on chatting for hours on end, supplied by cups of dark milk-sweet tea. While latté will hit you at 18 dirhams (5$) at the mall, these are goodness and satisfaction for a dirham (30¢).
• Cool off with an abra (taxi boats) ride across the creek. Sun setting, fresh breeze in your hair, 1 dirham ride, joy. (Don’t worry, I’ll cover these photographically in a future post)

I love these. Once on foot in downtown older Dubai, an abra ride is the main mean of transportation across the creek. A boat ride with strangers: one coin, one crossing, just get in. No life jackets, no tickets, no assigned seats, no stress about anything, really. They even play hardball when it comes to docking, often bumping into each other’s boats while honking our ears out. Love it.

All four levels of the the parking garage of my hotel get a scrub cleaning every week. There are four cleaning guys working every day to scrub a whole level, among the Porsches, the Ferraris and the Maseratis. The next day, they move on to the next level. And so it goes. Rinse and repeat.

There are countless examples likes these in Dubai, where cheap labor suddenly meets and fulfills the capricious requirements of “luxury”. To me, these incarnate perfectly the poles of wealth cohabiting—somewhat too easily—in a truly unfair world.

Every day I walk across the parking, and though I don’t own a Ferrari, I’m far from scrubbing the tire marks; the thought never leaves me: What did I do to deserve such a good life?

Probably the best thing of the whole Burj Dubai oasis: the free fountain spectacle running each 15 minutes or so to the inexorable pleasure of the tourist and shoppers. Running on par with its different soundtracks, the simple blow of the jets breaking the water’s surface adds to the rhythm of the performance. Like canons simply amplifying the auditory magnitude of the show.

The kids go crazay when the wind makes the falling water rain over to the mall’s boardwalk. Running back and forth from the railing to their respective parents, they scream to the idea of water and music dancing together so beautifully.

Day and night view of the Address hotel from the observatory deck on the Burj Dubai’s 124th floor. Now looking the other way around:

The best thing about this tower are its terraces. With teck flooring like a sumptuous backyard deck, the visitor can simply stroll its way outside, glancing at an unobstructed view of the surroundings*, glass panels circumscribing the deck being your only protection to the winds and laws of gravity. You’re at 450m off the ground, with nothing above your head.

* The only problem with Dubai is “surroundings”, for the most part, still rimes with “desert”.