Dubai under construction 2

As I stood in the sun doing my sketches of the city scape of Dubai laid out all around me from the top of the building where my son has his apartment I realized how hot it really is here. For the past week or so I have either spent most of my time indoors doing my paintings or the weather has been mild where the heat is concern and it was even rainning quite out of season according to those who has been here long enough.

The cityscape is like the aftermath of a science fiction where after a nuclear holocaust the whole population decided to rebuild their city from ground zero on wards except that this whole area was nothing but barren desert not two decades ago! Thanks to the far sightedness of the Maktum (The Ruler of Dubai and Deputy Primeminister of the Emerates) the city of Dubai has emerged from the desert sands like sand castles. There is so many buildings filling up the skyline and so much construction activities going on that the whole city feels like one huge construction site. Where does all the materials and machineries come from is only the most basic of questions compared to who is going to occupy all these rooms and buildings when they are completed? like what really is the population of Dubai itself and are the majority of the locals not already situated in their exhorbitantly built villas?

Well who am i to ask these silly questions in the face of such an awesome undertaking perhaps comparable to the construction of the Egyptian construction of the city of Luxor by Rameses in the ancient times or perhaps the Babylon of Humurabai. Any which way, Dubai will one day stand out as something the history books tells about as far as constructtions goes and in the meantime suffice to say that i am glad to be able to behold such a historic moment in the making even if it means staring at cranes and being dusted by cement trucks and oggled at by Pakistanis and Philipinos.

Perhaps its the Eimir's way of sharing the wealth of State with the rest of the world while giving his people all that he can give while at the same time putting Dubai and the rest of the Emerates on the pages of History. It is greatly hope that history will reflect his efforts as such and not the the man who 'built sand castles in the desert'.

In these times of economic woes all over the world, a project undertaken like this is a very noble act realized by the rest of the world or not. The money earned by the oil and gas is put to use to generate income not for the Emerates alone but for the entire world as they supply the workers, the materials, the expertise and so forth. In this sense it is a brilliant economic as well as identity building or what i would call the 'Branding of Dubai' as a State in the Emerates.