Amman, Dubai

After a long and sleepless day in Amman, Jordan I am now in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Dubai, it seems, is just one big construction project. A playhouse for the rich with more money than they know what to do with. In fact, new buildings are constructed at such a frequent and high pace that new roads have a hard time catching up. If you live in a new building, chances are that you have to travel on an uneven dirt road--easy on a camel but hell witha car. I haven't been to the heart of Dubai yet (I just got here last night) but I am looking forward to visiting the Burj Al Arab Hotel and the beaches. Tomorrow I plan on going to the Emirates Mall, which is supposed to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, mall in the world. They even have a few mosques built inside of it. Speaking of Islam, interestingly, I tried to access MySpace.com and it has apparently been blocked by the UAE. Here is the error message I received:

"We apologize, the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates."

Isn't that incredible??? Wow... Anyway, going back, it's not hard to see why there are so many buildings in Dubai (with excellent air conditioning, by the way)--it's freakin' hot as a mother outside! Very dry and dusty, but nothing like Saudi Arabia, which was completely red as I flew over it on the plane ride here. The plane ride to UAE was an interesting parallel to the plane ride to Israel, only, instead of sitting with 5 or 6 rabbis with their white taliths and black coats I was sitting with Emiratis who wear long white whatchamacallit suits and white headresses with a black headband. Both parties ordered special meals, kosher and hallal, respectively. I don't know, it was just interesting, it behooved me to reflect.

Another observation, the newspapers here are very colorful and printed on a thin, glossy high quality paper. The pictures are dramatic (well, its war between an Arab country and Israel, what can we expect?) and most of the articles read more like op-eds than objective reports. The actual op-eds are a lot more opinionated, however, with titles like "The root of all suffering is the Bush administration" and "What a conspiracy! America does all it can to ensure Israel gets what it wants." There are quite a few crime reports, mostly white collar but some bizzare ones like "Pakistani man charged with filming Filipino woman in toilet" and "Ethiopian housemaid gives birth at Dubai International Airport, dumbs baby in trash can." (Perhaps not so bizzare, after all, these things happen all the time in the US). But most of the paper is filled with business news and stories about the war and what Arab/Muslim countries are doing to relieve the Lebanese people. Just two examples: "Dubai sends 1000 tons of humanitarian aid items to Lebanon" and "Pakistan sends two ambulances." Wow... Thanks, Pakistan.

More later...