An agent had sent me over here on just such an all-expenses-paid (except for alcohol, godammit) jaunt. Initial reaction: Bonus! The hard part though, particularly after lunch, was sitting through astonishingly tedious presentations and staying awake to take notes. Thank God for workshops that were deemed 'confidential' and held behind closed doors. Cue me heading swiftly for the exit then the pool where in a watery bar a cheeseburger a la stale bun et fly in ketchup could be had for $30. Evenings were also free and so I explored a city that had changed so much in the 10 years since I'd last visited.
Dubai's main drawback is excessively high humidity, which is like walking around in a sauna, and no matter how much cash there is to splash, you won't change that. ِِِِAs a result, a short walk along the beach, passing enclosed air-conditioned bus stops, ended up with sweat streaming, sitting in the garden of an Arabian Nights themed hotel that goes for $5000 a night, smoking a fag under an electrically lit palm and watching labourers sweat too, setting up Google's mid-East annual gathering of pre-eminent geeks.
My seat on the park bench deteriorated when a dust storm began to blow and the moisture in the air become flying wet grit splatting on face and I pondered why on earth anyone would pay a fortune to buy a condo here. For a few months winter warmth and an increase in your chances of lung disease? Not to mention the religious laws. If I had that sort of bread, I'd go to a nice country like France, Spain, Italy or a Caribbean island. But there's plenty of work here, and plenty of those willing to do it, from cleaners to sales staff to bankers to chancers, although if you don't clear your debts in the Emirates, they'll bang you up until you do.
Thanks to a friendly shuttle bus driver from the $5000 hotel that I wasn't staying in ("Don't worry about it," he shouted as I squeezed in among Europeans and Asians fat on money, drenched in perfume) I eventually found the metro packed to the rafters with the working classes, mainly from the Indian sub-continent and Africa, no rail to grab onto and as sticky as the great outdoors.
My aim was Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building and I got off at whatever-station-it-was-supposedly-located-by, which it wasn't. The station was a shopping precinct - the Mall of the Emirates - which took me 20 minutes to escape from. Once I'd found the exit I took a mile long moving belt through a wide metallic tube, airportesque, to another mall, the Dubai Mall, equally as gigantic - in fact, the world's largest and even more flash and plush than the previous one, and equally difficult to get out of. Its saving grace was an aquarium teeming with fish life and crowned by a lone black/grey shark with shifty eyes, kind of emblematic of the city itself.
Searching for the tower through a grimy window, it dawned on me that the shoppers are just like the fish, without the water, moving aimlessly round and round this all-but enclosed tank, oxygen pumped in, occasionally pausing to gawk at something vaguely interesting, then round and round some more before hunger sets in ... and sitting in a fast-food Beijing duck (delicious, I've gotta say) joint, looking about, I thought that with all these identical restaurants and retail outlets I could be any place in the world. Anywhere, anytime; copycatting the rest. Nothing original here, although it is true I'd never seen a massive great fish tank sandwiched between Louis Vuitton and Mark's & Spencer's before.
I gave up looking for an exit and just pushed open a green door marked Danger! Open Only in Emergency! Yep, this an emergency, buddy. On the other side I found myself again blasted by humidity, kind of crashing into it in a juggernautical multi-storey parking lot and spent the next 10 minutes trying to get out of that too, panting and sweating with frustration, finally finding myself in another parking lot, one floor up with a view of a busy road filled with Ferraris and Aston Martins and Porsches as well as Nissan Sunnies for Indian family man. I still had no view of the Burj bloody Khalifa tower, just the occasional far-away blinking of an anti-aircraft light through the dust storm that was now a full-on drama. I turned round and went back the way I'd come and staggered into the hotel pub for a $15 pint of Guinness, a $30 double Scotch and the words of my agent echoing in my head, "Listen to me very carefully: I AM NOT covering bar expenses."
Recently I found out that there are 69 shopping malls in Dubai with 3 more being built and I'd hazard a guess they are being serviced by eight-lane superhighways. As I sat in the airport's smoking room, gazing out of the dust-caked window, I realised that until now I'd never looked forward to going back to Saudi. A few hours later, at home, I switched on the TV and was almost immediately, uncannily assaulted by an advert on CNN announcing: Dubai, The Centre of Now!
Do me a freaking favour. More like: Wanna go shopping - go to your nearest mall; wanna drive around - go to your nearest highway; wanna shop, drive, sweat, eat and breathe dust - Come to Dubai! We'll take care of your money too!