Dubai the best place on earth???

Switching gears a bit, a friend of mine sent me the following email and I thought it was hilarious, especially seeing as my sun glasses fogged up today when I stepped out of my car and into the steamy summer heat. It is H-O-T here.  Every time I comment on the heat to one of the Emirati locals, he looks at me with pity as though to say “aren’t you cute – you call this heat.”  I’m screwed.  Today’s temps, a toasty 98F (39C)…. child’s play next to the 104F degree weather I “enjoyed” in Muscat, Oman last week!!  The air is MOIST – humidity levels are around a million.  It’s going to be a long, painful summer.  

———

This following extract is taken from a New Yorker who moved to Dubai recently…

April 30th:
Just got transferred to work and live in beautiful Dubai , UAE!
WOW!!!
Now this is a city that knows how to live!!! Beautiful sunny days  and warm balmy evenings. It’s like New York City minus all the crooks, murderers, and drunks. What a place! I watched the sunset from a deck chair on my beautiful bedroom verandah. It was beautiful. I’ve finally  found my home. I love it here  

May 13th:
Really heating up. Got to 95 degrees today. Not a problem. Live in an air- conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car, and  everything is fully air-conditioned. What pleasure to see the sun everyday like this. I’m turning into a sun worshiper.

May 30th:
Had the backyard landscaped with tropical plants today around our lovely pool. Lots of palms and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it  here.
Heat is no problem at all.

June 10th:
The temperature hasn’t been below 95 all week even during the night. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least today it’s  kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.

July 15th:
Fell asleep by the pool. Got 3rd degree burns over 90% of my body.
Missed 5 days of work. What a dumb thing to do in this lovely city. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect th ol’ sun in a climate like this.

July 20th:
Kitty (our cat) sneaked into the car when I left for the office. By the time I got to the hot car for my lunch break, Kitty had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag and stank up the $60,000 Audi. I told the kids that she ran away. The car now smells like Wiskettes and cat sh*t. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat.

July 25th:
The wind sucks. It feels like a giant f**king hair dryer in here!!!  And it’s hot as hell. The home air-conditioner died. The f**king AC repairman charged 500 Dirhams just to drive over and tell me it  was broken in f**king Hindu English or some language that I couldn’t understand.

July 30th:

Air conditioner still broken Been sleeping outside by the pool for 3 nights now because it is 7000 f**king degrees inside. Bloody 2,000,000 Dirhams house and we can’t even go inside. Why did I ever come here?

F**k the sun. F**k the wind. F**k the freakin’ ocean.  

August 4th:
It’s 114 f**king degrees today. Finally got the ol’ air-conditioner fixed. It cost 2,000 fucking Dirhams and got the temperature down to 25, but the f**king humidity makes the house feel 30 f**king Dubai degrees. Stupid terrorist repairman. I hate this stupid f**king place.

August 8th:
If another local wiseass cracks, ‘Hot enough for you today?’ I’m going to f**king whack him all the way back to his goddamn desert. F**king Dubai; by the time I get to work with all that f**king traffic and heat, the car’s radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like a baked cat!!!

August 9th:

Tried to run some errands today because it is f**king Friday.  Wore shorts and sat on the black leather seats in my Audi. The seat was so f**king hot I thought my ass was on fire. I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and my ass. Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried ass, and a baked cat.

August 10th:
The weather report might as well be a recording. Hot, humid and f**king sunny. It’s been too hot to do anything for 2 damn months and the weatherman dude wearing the white tablecloth on TV says it might really warm up next week. Does it ever rain in this damn f**king place? What is next, a hell freezing over wave?  

August 14th:
WELCOME TO HELL!!! Temperature got to 120 today. Now the air-conditioner’s gone in my Audi. The Audi serviceman said, ‘Hot enough for you today?’ F**k him and f**k Audi. My wife had to spend the 7,000 Dirham to bail my ass out of jail for assaulting that stupid bastard. What kind of a sick demented idiot would want to live in this s**t hole?

August 15th:

F**k this place. I’m off back to New York!!!

Saudi Rides the Retail Boom

by Vivian Salama

The National

Just a few minutes walk from the Great Mosque of Haram, a shiny new mall will soon open, featuring the likes of Tiffany and TopShop.

To many, this is just another example of rampant globalisation. To others, it is a simple business opportunity.

Brands as diverse as Hugo Boss and Juicy Couture are jostling for a foothold in Saudi Arabia, leaving the kingdom caught in a dilemma between commerce and reverence.

“Some people see it as McDonaldising the world, putting a KFC or a Starbucks a few metres from [Masjid] al Haram, but we are traders and for us, Saudi Arabia offers a great opportunity,” said Khalid al Sehaibany, the leasing director for Mohammad al Habib, a Riyadh-based developer.

As the religious centre for 1.2 billion Muslims and home to over 20 per cent of the world’s proven petroleum reserves, Saudi Arabia has long trod a fine line between its desire for prosperity and attachment to tradition.

Now the kingdom is striving to foster an improved business climate as, like many oil-producing countries, it seeks to decrease its oil dependency. As with other GCC countries, retail has the potential to become a significant contributor to the economy.

While much attention has been focused on the UAE, analysts say that Saudi Arabia is on its way to becoming a regional retail leader. Worth US$6 billion (Dh22bn), the sector in Saudi Arabia holds second place regionally after Dubai’s.

Some seven million square metres of new retail space are due for completion in the kingdom by 2010. Fuelled by these projects and a rapid population growth, sales are forecast to increase at a healthy five per cent per year until the end of 2012.

“This is a country with a lot of potential,” said Naeem Ghafoor, the chief executive of Skyline Retail Services. “The people have money, are well travelled and well cultured.”

As in most countries in the region, malls function as entertainment centres, providing people of all ages with a safe and culturally acceptable gathering place. The retailers reap the benefit of this guaranteed footfall. However, the enormous spending power of Saudi Arabia’s 21 million citizens is the real force behind the sector’s massive potential.

“Saudi consumers have the strongest purchasing power in the GCC,” said Mr Sehaibany. “They have money and they like to shop. What more can the [retailers] ask?”

According to government estimates, the average Saudi per capita income has grown 10.6 times, from about 5,083 Saudi riyals (Dh4,978 ) in 1971 to about 55,216 riyals in 2006. As a result, the kingdom finds itself in a mad rush to meet the demand for bigger and better residential complexes and shopping centres.

To reach more, click here.

What happened to the man of change?

This is an interesting article from First Post.  I admit that I shared similar concerns after watching Obama’s speech to AIPAC.  Is change conditional?  

Barack Obama’s stance on Israel exposes his agenda for change as a sham, says Alexander Cockburn

On June 3 Barack Obama claimed the greatest prize the Democratic Party can offer, namely his nomination as its candidate for the presidency. The very next day the salesman of ‘change’ raced from Minnesota back to Washington and publicly abased himself at the feet of an organisation whose prime mission is to ensure that change unpalatable to the state of Israel will never be pressed by the United States government.

The terms of Obama’s surrender before the American Israel Public Committee exploded like rhetorical cluster bombs across the Middle East. To Israel and its Arab neighbours it surely signalled that, whoever moves into the White House next January, there will be no swerve from Bush’s role as guarantor of Israeli intransigence.

Before he began his drive to the nomination Obama took good care to get the support of

influential American Jews in Chicago like the Crown family, associated with the aerospace firm, General Dynamics. Worried about rumours fanned by the Clinton campaign that he was still a secret Muslim, Obama insisted that before the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania, a state with a politically significant Jewish vote, his campaign start a Hebrew-language blog in Israel.

So Obama came to this year’s AIPAC conference determined to dispel all remaining doubts that he’s a Friend of Israel. “We will also use all elements of American power to pressure Iran,” he assured AIPAC. “I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…Everything and I mean everything.” He swore he wouldn’t talk to the elected representatives of the Palestinians, Hamas. To thunderous applause he declared, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

As Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli writer expostulated furiously in the wake of this last sentence, “Along comes Obama and retrieves from the junkyard the outworn slogan

‘I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon… Everything’

‘Undivided Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel for all Eternity’. Since Camp David, all Israeli governments have understood that this mantra constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to any peace process. It has disappeared – quietly, almost secretly – from the arsenal of official slogans.

“No Palestinian, no Arab, no Muslim will make peace with Israel if the Haram-al-Sharif compound (also called the Temple Mount), one of the three holiest places of Islam and the most outstanding symbol of Palestinian nationalism, is not transferred to Palestinian sovereignty. That is one of the core issues of the conflict. On that very issue, the Camp David conference of 2000 broke up.”

Obama’s foreign policy advisors were tearing their hair out and the next day his campaign issued a clarification. “Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties” as part of “an agreement that they both can live with”. All the same, Jerusalem in Obama’s eyes must be the capital of Israel.

Although Obama’s statements at AIPAC got

Obama’s most egregious talent is the ability to allay suspicion among the powerful that he could rock the boat

wide coverage across the Middle East, what was obvious here in the US was the utter absence of comment in the mainstream press. It was evidently taken as a given, unworthy of editorial remark, that a man who might very well be the next president was de-activating the policy of ‘change’ precisely where it is most needed at the behest of the men the popular TV comedian Jon Stewart edgily derided as “the elders of Zion”.

Obama’s most egregious talent is the ability to adapt his rhetoric with ominous speed, to allay any suspicion among the powerful that he could rock the boat in a way they might not care for. Earlier in the campaign he was criticised for not wearing the American flag as a lapel pin. At the AIPAC event he wore a double lapel pin, with both the US and Israeli flags.

Is there a ‘real Obama’ waiting to emerge, once the messy business of pleasing the voters is over? Not really. The making of the ‘real’ Obama is an ongoing project, and the AIPAC speech an important marker in the evolution of ‘change’ into immobility. 

UAE reaps farmland in Sudan

by Vivian Salama

The National

ABU DHABI // A scheme has been sealed to buy farmland in Sudan and grow crops that will be used to build up the UAE’s strategic food reserves, with the first fields cultivated towards the end of the year, officials from both countries say.

Crops would be planted on a farm of about 70,000 feddans (29,400 hectares) in Northern Sudan. While the deal will undoubtedly provide a much-needed boost to Sudan’s economy, Abu Dhabi officials say their strategy is to shield UAE residents against record high commodity prices, crippling export bans by supplier nations and potential food shortages.

“Within a short time, it will be very hard to secure these kinds of crops worldwide,” said Mohammed al Suwaidi, the acting director general of the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), the government branch heading the project. “Even if you have the money to buy it, you won’t be able to find it.” 

Officials said it was too early to disclose the value of the deal. Only 16 per cent of the nearly 100 million hectares of land in Sudan has been used for farming, according to Sudanese officials. Crippled by poor infrastructure and technology, the government of Africa’s largest country is hoping to exploit this resource as a means of attracting investment.

“Sudan is looking for investors because we are lacking in infrastructure and proper financing, so we give the land at a very low price to attract investors,” said Nurel Huda Fath al Aliem sid Ahmed, the economic adviser at the Sudanese Embassy in Abu Dhabi. “Sudan will give free water, cheap land, exemptions from customs duties and from all the fees that might restrict investment.”

The farm, located in the town of Abu Hamed in the northern Sudanese state of Nahr an Nil, will be used primarily for the cultivation of alfalfa. According to Mr Suwaidi, the price of alfalfa has increased by almost 50 per cent since last year. Officials say that soil studies are under way to determine whether the land will also yield substantial amounts of corn, rice, peanuts and potatoes.

The UAE imports nearly 85 per cent of its food, worth an estimated Dh11.01 billion (US$40bn) annually.

Escalating inflation has driven the Ministry of Economy to consider alternative sources of food to boost supplies, while cutting costs. Co-operative societies have been urged to form partnerships with food producing countries, enabling them to buy produce at source. 

The Ministry of Social Affairs has also recommended that local co-operatives lease farms from similar organisations in countries such as India and Brazil, which would significantly reduce the chain between farmer and retailer.

The Ministry of Economy is considering the purchase of farmland in Pakistan worth US$500 million (Dh1.8bn), as part of a strategy to lower food import costs. Similar farming schemes are under consideration by the ADFD, although no other deals have been finalised. 

A number of GCC states had expressed interest in cultivating Sudanese land, however only the UAE had finalised negotiations, said Dr Ahmed, adding that the Saudi Arabian private sector is also pursuing farmland investments.

“About 300,000 feddans have been bought by Saudi companies but they have not begun to cultivate,” he said. Feddans are the unit of measurement used in Sudan and some other Arab speaking countries.

The Sudanese official said that while talks with the GCC have got off to a good start, his government hopes that these investments will grow in time.

“Seventy thousand feddans is really nothing when you think of how much land we can offer and how much money these governments can spend,” Dr Ahmed said. “We hope to receive investments for one million feddans, not only 70,000.”

The Abu Hamed farm is one of several investment projects headed by the ADFD in Sudan. The Government recently pledged Dh275m to finance dams in the African nation. Mr Suwaidi said the first Dh184m loan would be used to complete the Marawi Dam in Northern Sudan, which the ADFD had previously helped finance with a Dh551m extension.

Dr Ahmed said that such projects were vital to Sudan’s prosperity. “We are really depending on governments here to help us to build our infrastructure, whether paving the roads, or greater construction or better electricity,” he said.

vsalama@thenational.ae

And political junkies everywhere breathe a long sigh of relief… at least for now.

I’ve got to give it to her.  Hillary bowed out of what Jon Stewart has very accurately described as the Long, Flat, Seemingly Endless Bataan Death March To The White House by looking back at the last 150 years, noting the strides women have made fighting for equality.  While her words were moving, I don’t think she lost because she is a woman.  She lost because the country is so desperate to lift itself from status quo. Americans need change.  Regardless of whether or not they liked Bill Clinton is irrelevant, another 4 to 8 years of Clinton is only going to perpetuate a cyclical political pattern, and NOT bring about the new political era the country is ready for. – VS

By Lorraine Woellert and Kristin Jensen

June 7 (Bloomberg) – Hillary Clintonformally conceded the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Illinois Senator Barack Obama and told supporters they should join her in the fight to help him win the White House.

She urged her supporters to set aside any ill-well left from the close primary campaign and put their energy and passion into electing Obama.

“Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been,” Clinton, 60, told a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters gathered today at the National Building Museum in Washington. “We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president.”

The event capped an historic 17-month campaign that evolved into one of the closest nomination battles in U.S. history. Clinton, a New York senator, had held off on a formal concession even after Obama amassed enough convention delegates on June 3 to clinch the nomination.

Obama, 46, wasn’t part of the event and spent the day in his hometown of Chicago with his family. He and Clinton met privately on June 5 at the Washington home of California Senator Dianne Feinstein and discussed how the Democrats can reclaim the White House, their campaigns said.

`Thrilled and Honored’

Obama said he was “thrilled and honored” to have Clinton’s support. In a written statement, he praised Clinton for her inspiration and hard work on behalf of America. “I know she will continue to be in the forefront of that battle this fall.”

Obama will be facing Arizona Senator John McCain, a Republican who has often bucked his own party and has earned a reputation as a maverick. Both McCain and Obama have shown they can appeal to independent voters and are likely to have a pitched battle for that segment of the electorate.

Clinton may be able to help Obama most with her strongest supporters — women, blue-collar workers and older Americans. Those groups helped her claim victories in general election swing states including Ohio and Pennsylvania during the primary season. She called on them to give their allegiance to Obama.

“I’ve had a front-row seat to his campaign and I have seen his strength, his determination and his grit,” Clinton said.

Close Race

The contest between Clinton and Obama drew 36 million voters to Democratic primaries and caucuses in the last six months and the two candidates were separated by fewer than 100,000 votes at the end. While Clinton won nine of the last 16 contests, she never overcame a devastating 11-contest winning streak by Obama in February that allowed him to rack up delegates.

“She emerges from this campaign an even more powerful national leader,”Ellen Malcolm, president of the Democratic women’s fundraising group Emily’s List, said in a note to supporters yesterday. “And I know she will use that power to help Democrats, including Senator Obama, win.”

Clinton said the nomination race made history and showed the changes that have taken place in the U.S. Obama is the first African-American to lead a major party into the general election and Clinton was the first woman to be a serious contender for the presidency.

“Together, Senator Obama and I achieved milestones essential to our progress as a nation, part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union,” she said. “That is truly remarkable, my friends.”

Republican Reaction

As Clinton and Obama moved to unite Democrats, Republicans attempted to capitalize on the drawn out and often contentious primary race. Minutes before Clinton was scheduled to take the stage, the Republican National Committee put up a Web site with video clips of the Democratic rivals attacking each other.

Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a former Democrat who was the party’s candidate for vice president in 2004, reached out to Clinton supporters on behalf of McCain, who he supports.

In an e-mail soliciting support for a new group, Citizens for McCain, Lieberman wrote that the phones at McCain’s campaign headquarters “have been ringing with disaffected Democrats” calling to support McCain.

Senator Charles Schumer of New York called Lieberman’s e- mail disappointing and predicted party unity in November.

“Hillary supporters will rally behind the Obama ticket,” Schumer told reporters at the National Building Museum.

Rancor Remains

Rancor from the primary race remains. There was a smattering of boos when Clinton urged her supporters to work for Obama’s election and some in the crowd said they would vote for McCain rather the Illinois senator.

“Obama is a mediocre Chicago politician who voted present more than 100 times while in the Illinois Senate,” said Linda Mahoney, a paralegal from Silver Spring, Maryland. “Even if he gets a female to run for vice president, we will not vote for him.”

Still, other Clinton supporters said such sentiments are the exception.

“Most of these people are going to vote for Obama,” said Mary Hanley, a Washington, D.C., resident who works for a non- profit organization. “Hillary is going to provide a lot of leadership to help bring them along.”

Over the past few days, some of Clinton’s most prominent supporters began a campaign to push her as the vice presidential nominee. Clinton’s campaign on June 5 issued a statement trying to downplay the talk, saying she wasn’t seeking the vice presidential nomination.

The Long, Flat, Seemingly Endless Bataan Death March To The White House Nearer to the End

In the words of the great Jon Stewart, The Long, Flat, Seemingly Endless Bataan Death March To The White House appears to be one step closer to completion.  (thank Gawwwwd — even watching it from the Middle East is exhausting, and I am significantly removed from the hype)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president.

The former first lady was not ready to formally suspend or end her race in a speechTuesday night in New York City. But if Obama gets to the magic number of delegates, 2,118, she was prepared to acknowledge that milestone, according to aides who declined to be identified.

Obama effectively secured the magic number Tuesday, based on a tally of pledged delegates, superdelegates who have declared their preference, and another 15 superdelegates who have confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press.

It also included delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.

On NBC’s “Today Show,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, “I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee.”

She will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, the two senior officials said, the campaign is over.

Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.

The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.

Universal health care, Clinton’s signature issue as first lady in the 1990s, was a point of dispute between Obama and the New York senator during their epic nomination fight.

Clinton was at home in Chappaqua, N.Y., with her husband, former President Clintonand daughter Chelsea. She was placing calls to friends and supporters and working on a final draft of her speech. She was also resting her voice, which was nearly shot after days of nonstop campaigning.

In a formal statement, the campaign made clear the limits of how far she would go in Tuesday night’s speech. “Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination,” the statement said.

Clinton field hands who worked in key battlegrounds said they were told to stand down, without pay, and await instructions. Speaking not for attribution because they didn’t want to jeopardize their jobs searches, many said they were peddling resumes, returning to their hometowns or seeking out former employers.

Clinton officials have said they would not contest the seating of Michigan delegates at the convention in Denver this August. The campaign was angry this past weekend when a Democratic National Committee panel awarded Obama delegates it thought Clinton deserved.

Growth a Challenge for Gulf Airports

 

by Vivian Salama

The National

DUBAI // Airports in the Middle East must expand and improve their infrastructure to handle the rapid growth in the number of aircraft and passengers they are accommodating, according to industry leaders.

Delegates attending the Airport Show also called on governments in the region to allow airports to operate at a profit to allow them to finance new infrastructure projects.

“Aviation infrastructure enhancement, regrettably, is still way off the top of most governments’ priority lists because it is either unpopular or too costly,” said Andreas Schimm, the director of economics and programme development for the Switzerland-based Airports Council International.

“Continued calls for lowering airport user charges are counterproductive; it undermines the financial basis for future airport development and, ultimately, the basis for growth of the entire aviation industry.”

Airports in Gulf countries are expected to be able to handle as many as 300 million passengers annually by 2015, three times the current volume, according to Mr Schimm, who added that the capacity could be exceeded as early as 2020.

Dubai has the fastest aviation growth rate in the world at 40 per cent higher than the current global average. High growth rates are also being recorded in cities like Abu Dhabi and Doha, which are becoming popular transit points.

Alan Bourjeily, the general manager of Bayanat, an engineering firm that works with a number of UAE airports, said they were straining under the unprecedented economic boom. “Dubai and Abu Dhabi … are promoting their cities more and so more passengers are coming – more than the airports can take. That’s why you have these fast-track projects, which is not an easy task and not always a good idea when it comes to such critical applications.”

Paul Griffith, the chief executive of Dubai Airports, added: “On the ground, we are balancing aggressive growth rates against a constrained campus at Dubai International Airport.” 

Dubai International Airport serves 205 destinations, more than London Heathrow, and passenger traffic is expected to exceed 40m this year. Traffic at Abu Dhabi International Airport is growing at more than 30 per cent per year and will top 10m passengers in 2010.

The US$6.8 billion (Dh24.97bn) project to expand the airport’s Terminal 3 is expected to provide only temporary relief. Likewise, the new $10bn Al Maktoum International Airport, has been designed to handle 120m passengers per year and is expected to be fully operational by about 2015.

Over the past few years regional airlines have ordered new aircraft in record numbers in preparation for rising demand.

This only exacerbates the problem, some industry leaders believe.“You can buy planes a lot faster than you can build terminals,” said Rudy Vercelli, the chief executive of Abu Dhabi Airports Company. “Growth is coming a lot faster than we can develop infrastructure and that is the biggest challenge.” 

Airport officials also said issues ranging from roads and parking to faster check-in procedures must all be addressed as part of this push for better infrastructure. They are also calling for flexibility in assigning space for airlines and retail tenants, which influences how smoothly travellers can transit an airport.

“These are challenges not just to the airports, but to surrounding areas,” said Mr Griffiths.

Capital expenditure in the global airport sector has been increasing at about 10 per cent per year, according to Airports Council International.

It is further estimated that the cost required to expand airport facilities through 2020 would be close to $500bn, which is equivalent to the annual turnover of the entire global airline industry.

vsalama@thenational.ae

Beer and Barley

Just a quick post.  This is a fun website tracking the cost of a pint of beer in 200 countries — but it’s also an interesting way to track rising commodity prices around the world, given that one of the main ingredients in beer is barley. bottoms up!

http://www.pintprice.com/