Who is Dubai?

Nowadays everybody knows what is Dubai (if you don’t you may have just landed on Earth). However very few people know what EXACTLY is Dubai. Is it a country? A city? Who lives there? Even those who come to visit and many of those who live here do not have an exact idea of what this place is all about.

Today I bought a copy of this week’s Time Out Dubai and the cover says ‘Who are you?’. They have polled 600 people around Dubai to try to get an idea of what makes people live here. I have decided to write a few of the findings here, plus some extra info.

Dubai is an emirate. An emirate is almost like a state. It belongs to a country called United Arab Emirates (UAE – 4 million people), which was founded in 1974 (I think). There are 07 emirates in the UAE. Like in Brazil, where there is a state called Rio and its capital is a city called Rio, over here the state, or emirate, is called Dubai and the capital is Dubai. There are other cities within the emirate, like Hatta or Jebel Ali.

The capital of the UAE is the Abu Dhabi emirate. They are the rich father. Dubai is the playboy son, who likes to try new expensive cars and build flashy skyscrapers. There is a sister called Sharjah, who was very pretty ages ago and still has some beauty. However Sharjah remained single and is now devoted to religion. The other 4 emirates are poor cousins. By the way, the population of the UAE is roughly 20% local Arabs and 80% expatriates consisting of a mixed bag mostly of Indian, Pakistani, Iranians, English, Australian, South African, Pilipino, other Arabs, Chinese, etc etc etc. The official language is Arabic but the ‘lingua franca’ is English. You get by much easier in English than in Arabic. Actually you do not have to speak Arabic at all to survive here, hence my lack of interest in learning it.

Dubai has an airline called Emirates. Abu Dhabi has its own airline called Etihad and Sharjah could not be alone. Its airline is called Air Arabia. Our neighbor Qatar, which is almost like another emirate, has an airline called Qatar Airways and Bahrain, barely one hour away from here also has its own airline, Gulf Air. Question: how come Brazil, with 180 million people and 8 million sq kilometers can only have 2 big airlines?

Some numbers…

20% of Dubai’s population has been here for less than two years
80% of Dubai’s population lives on rented houses/flats
68% of Dubai’s Westerners think this is a good place to raise children
60% of Dubai’s population is saving money every month
60% of Dubai’s male population is overweight, 25% of the females are also fat!
57% of Dubai’s population drinks alcohol
45% of Arabs smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day
Almost 95% own a mobile phone
Dubai’s biggest problems: high rental charges, traffic jams and rising cost of living

Still curious? Come see for yourself! By the way, the biggest building in the world, Burj Dubai, under construction, is already 60 stories high!