Miss Dubai .. this is too fast for your high heals ..

Today I was at the airport police section following up with a case that involves me against my boss as a part of a labor dispute we hadn't settled yet ..

this is not the point ..

I was reading at the walls ..
criminal cases in 2004 : 348 ..
criminal cases in 2005 : 345 ..
criminal cases in 2006 : 606 ..

by the way .. my case number was 500+ (no need to tell the exact number) .. and we are still in mid 2007 .. we should expect more or less around 1000 cases for 2007.. which is showing a doubling trend across the time of the buildings boom ( eh .. not babies boom like US's 1945 ) ..

what was more interesting than these numbers was my file waiting almost 25 days in the hands of incompetent and weakly educated police personnel .. there is a brain and 20 members in the records section .. this is an example that you'd find in all the departments of the police around Dubai ..

sad .. right ?

This is only one part of the story .. everything else seems to be connected to threads of dangers .. after we all heard about the high risk mortgages problem in US and the black Thursday stock markets lived the past days ( Arab stock markets were off for a weekend except Egypt .. luckily ) .. The market keeps bloating the balloon created by people riding the bull ..

UAE market lost most of its value .. Emaar's share reached lowest since 2 years .. 10 Dhs a share .. this is the leading stock ..

so .. is the crisis covering only this part ?

inflation exceeded 10% ..
property prices doubled and even tripled in some places ..
education expenses are a nightmare ..
salaries are not moving up ..
people are less well off by 5% a year (inflation - raises) ..

but dude .. Burj Dubai is almost done ..
eh .. I think who are interested in this building getting done are the workers that are getting paid in the range of 150-200$ a month .. these people don't have any type of education that would guarantee them a basic understanding of their rights .. while some white skinned Brits are paid a 100 times more salary for signing the project.

what was more interesting .. is the move of the headquarter of Haliberton to Dubai .. they are contracting with some training companies to train them to exploit people as being a daily practice by companies .. almost 250,000 companies are assigned only 80 labor officers and investigators to check on labor status ..

so .. the turn is going to hit the properties market for sure .. no matter how much was learned from past countries experiences .. what we feel is being done does not exceed giving a daily dose of Panadole to silence the pain instead of visiting the doctor to deal with it .. this worsens it .. and creates a foggy reality that will not continue ..


There is nothing wrong with sitting down and drafting ways to live away from the tall buildings shades to adapt UAE's place and give it its specific context .. dealing with specifics is not going to happen through hiring overseas committees to do so .. creating job knowledge and adequate personnel development will take time and effort .. but it pays off in terms of vision and future of a country's well being ..


so .. my lady .. sneakers aren't too bad .. though they might not give you the shape you are looking for ..