Dubai, U.A.E. II

Driving in Internet City. Many IT companies are here. This city was made about five years ago, and not that many people knew about this area back then. Well, ten years ago, the word “internet” was not spread out in public that much, so from the naming of this city still carries the “new” atmosphere in that sense.

Lunch. There are three different kinds (chicken, lamb and beef) Kababs and Quesadilla-looking pizza with rice. Oh boy. This was good!

	Constructions are everywhere. From what I see, there are more and more residential buildings, but also office buildings and hotels. About fifty percent of world-wide cranes are collected here. They try to bring in as many as cranes as possible to accelerate the constructions of the whole city.
I saw some Japanese cranes also. Japanese names in Japanese were still on the cranes. I am not sure if Japanese companies are here to build buildings or local companies here purchased those “left-over” cranes from Japan. If it is the latter, for sure they didn’t bother taking the Japanese name off the crane.
	Most of the construction workers are from Philippines and India. I think there are more Indians than Pilipino though. This is their commuting bus.

It seems workers are given a place (shelter?) to sleep, and busses like this or even bigger ones like Greyhound buses bring them back and forth between their construction site and the shelter.
I can’t imagine how it is like to work from early morning to evening in 100 degree Fahrenheit.

Because of the extreme changes in Dubai, it seems their rent now costs three times more compared to three years ago. However, their wage did not increase that much, so most of the foreign people were forced to leave the country. Local Arabian residents are only ten percent of the population, and most of them have their own business and very rich. The rest of population is immigrants.

Another view. I can’t tell where I was, but somewhere in Dubai.

Rich people have their driver, but a lot of people seem to use this public transportation. This is like a water bus.

This crazy city has something crazy like this. In the middle, you can see the ski slope. When outside is 100F (40c), you can enjoy ski. Can you imagine the cost of cooling system for this place?

From the inside. Can you see the real ski lift?

This ski slope is attached to a huge shopping mall, so you can have dinner by watching the skiers. As a matter of fact, I also had dinner in a restaurant where I could see the ski slope. It was strange to enjoy sushi in the desert right next to ski slope.