Here I am, another day locked inside as it is far too hot to walk around and there is absolutely nowhere indoors to go such as a FNAC store, museum, gallery, cafe and so on. Boring... Sitting at home, reading, eating, getting fatter.
Last night I had a Jeddah flight, those crazy 400 screaming passengers all dressed in white robes going for their pilgrimage to Mecca. It was actually quite a nice flight albeit very very tiring. There were too many children. And not any type of children but Arabic children. They are simply the most unpolite and spoilt kids in the world and their parents have absolutely no control over them. They hide under the seats and get caught in the wiring. They play in the aisles and we trip over them. They cry very loud because they dont want to be strapped on their seatbelts for landing. It is just tooooooo much.
Well, at least before that flight I had spent 3 very nice days with my parents in Dubai. They stayed at a nice hotel in a place that looks more like Disney (Pirates of the Caribbean) than Dubai. We had dinner at the Burj al Arab one night and the place looks like a circus. Very kitsch. The view however from the top restaurant is stunning! It feels like you are hanging over the Persian Gulf from a height of 200 metres. Amazing. The food was not as amazing but nice anyway.
On their last day here there was a major blackout in Dubai. At 9:30 am the power went off everywhere in the Emirate! Nobody could explain what was going on and how long it would take. Now think of a city that relies 100% in electricity without any of it? By midday it was too hot to stand anywhere. There was no airconditioning. The malls were closed. Mobiles phone did not work. Neither did the telephones. Traffic was chaotic. We were in the middle of the Gold Souk when it started and thought it was only in that area. Once we got to a mall and were denied entry we went back to the hotel thinking that a modern tourist complex in Dubai would have a generator. Nope! Even flights were cancelled!!! At 3 pm the rich areas of Dubai had the power restored but areas such as Karama and Bur Dubai (basically where the lower classes live) did not have power until much later.
The best part however was the following day when we read the news about the whole situation and all papers stated that it had lasted only a few hours (it lasted 6 hours), that citizens sought refuge in the shopping malls for their generators and air con (all of them were closed), that police teams were dispatched immediately to interchanges and traffic ran smoothly (they certainly were not in the taxi I was, trying to get back to the hotel) and that internet and mobile phones had absolutely no disruption (there was no mobile phone signal at all). So, once again the joys of living in a censored society, where nothing bad ever happens, even when it happens).
To summarize the whole situation, I am fed up and looking seriously into alternatives to leave Dubai until the end of the year. I will not tell you here what happened in Emirates two days ago, when all cabin crew received a letter from management because I dont want to run the risk of having somebody read these lines and I get in trouble. I can already get in trouble for criticising the government!!! Scary!!!
Now I have to go. Lahore in Pakistan is waiting for me! Better call it La Whore instead!!!
