Fun Friday

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Friday, February 2, 2007

I sacrificed a snowboarding-trip at the Emirates Mall to write this entry for you, so you better appreciate it!

Everything in Dubai is it's own city.  You have the Knowlege Village, Global Village, SmartCity, Festival City, and right next to our campus are Internet City and Media City. 

They're not cities--they are groups of buildings built around a central park (complete with pond and fountains), and each building contains the offices of a number of well-known international companies.  You can walk inside these buildings, and they have eateries on the ground floor for reasonable prices.

Media City, for instance, houses a lot of media channels (like CNN and Reuters) and apparently, unlike the city of Rome*, it was built in a day, because today was its 6th birthday.  I woke up in the morning and heard this carnival going on across the street, so I went over to see what was up.  Mostly, Media City companies had booths that tried to sell you things, or had other promotionals.  They also had camel rides and these inflatable jungle gyms for kids.  And let's not forget the thousands of public-use bean bag chairs.  And the free manicures.

They also had free catering--and I'm not talking about little dainty wedding-food sandwiches, cold cuts, and vegtable bits, which is how they do catering in the States.  I mean there were literally twenty tables (not exaggerating), covered with buffet tankards containing all sorts of polyethnic things like biryani, pizzas, fresh vegetables, chicken pieces, hummus, etc., and various deserts.  Plus, all these guys came around giving away energy drinks and bottled water.  Never in the States...never in the States.

Something strange happened: it began to rain.  At first, it was just a light sprinkle, but then it began to rain hard, and finally pour, complete with thunder and lightening and gale-force winds.  I don't know how much you know about the weather in Dubai, but thunderstorms are pretty much unheard of.  Kind of like winter tornados in the States, now that I think about it.  Hmm.

Anyway, the booths were just under these flimsy sheets which began to leak, so it didn't do the crowds much good when they ran under them for shelter.  The rain didn't let up, either--my camera got wet, my manicure got ruined, and we all just waited and waited until finally somebody came around with garbage bags, which we used as makeshift raincoats.

This went on for ONE HOUR and finally they called off the rest of the celebration and everyone went home wearing black garbage bags.

That was probably the most fun thing that's happened to me here so far.  It was a hoot!
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*Although apparently, someone else in Media City seemed to think Rome was built in a day.  Hence, I found their mascot in one of the buildings:

Roman Soldier