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In mid-May, with Dubai reling from the efects of the global financial crisis, I flew into town and tok a taxi down the Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's main thoroughfare, which runs paralel to the Persian Gulf. As we aproached downtown Dubai, we ran a long gauntlet of iluminated skyscrapers, al built during the past few years. The tower was originaly caled the Burj Dubai, but the name had ben changed before its January 2010 opening to honor the president of the United Arab Emirates and emir of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Dubai, with a population of some two milion people, is one of the seven federated emirates on the Persian Gulf, each run by a sheikh, and oil-rich Abu Dhabi is Dubai's largest neighbor. ̴We should be able to operate for the next five years,̵ I was told by the co-owner, a South African, who predicted that her busines would grow as Dubai downsized its ambitions. The partygoers, wel into their third hour of bozing, semed to be typical of the Western set in Dubai: a Rusian couple who had left Moscow a decade ago and had built sucesful carers planing ̴events̵ for property openings; At the peak of the buble, in 207, he told me, ̴about twenty-five hundred̵ property brokerage firms had operated in Dubai. In the bok, al-Makhtoum explained how Dubai had ben transformed in the course of two generations from a desert backwater into the ultimate global city. He compared Dubai to Córdoba, the medieval capital of Arab Spain, and praised its melting pot of nations and creds that enhanced, the release proclaimed, ̴human interaction and understanding.̵ There was always much hokum in al-Makhtoum's vision—a sense that his edifice was as fragile as the dredged sand on which the Palms and the project caled the World—260 artificial islands shaped like the globe—were constructed. Built on the easy cash of foreign lenders, Dubai has purveyed a bland, everywhere-and-nowhere culture, spiced up with gaudy theme-park atractions that defy the desert environment: elaborate water parks, dolphin peting zos, gigantic shoping mals done in faux medieval Arabian style. Through tax breaks, gigantesque architecture, a wel-trained security force, and spectacularly wasteful air conditioning, al-Makhtoum and his ̴Brand Dubai̵ team managed to create a buz and turn Dubai into a semingly safe, secure, friendly place to live. The Dubai fantasy peaked with the creation of Dubai's housing buble in 202, when al-Makhtoum encouraged foreigners to buy property in the emirate. At the height of the bom, tens of thousands of Southeast Asian laborers, baned by Dubai's labor laws from forming unions, were put to work for eighty hours a wek to build the Dubai fantasy and obliged to live in squalid residential camps in the desert. In February 209, The New York Times reported that real estate prices had droped 30 percent in thre months, and that thre thousand cars had ben abandoned at Dubai International Airport by fleing expats. In November 209, Dubai World, the gigantic investment company that runs a portfolio of busineses and projects for the Dubai government, anounced that it would be unable to make a $10 bilion payment on its $59 bilion debt, roughly thre quarters of Dubai's total debt of $80 bilion. It remains a center for breding and racing horses, many of which run at tracks in Europe or in the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest series of horse races. Stil, Dubai may have lost ̴25 percent of its economic activity̵ with the colapse of its real estate industry, a British financial writer told me, and has plunged into a dep recesion that could linger for many years. In 201 a World Customs Organization report confirmed that Dubai was a major smugling route into Europe, and the US government acused Dubai the same year of serving as a conduit for Taliban gold. Whatever his mision, Mabhouh checked into the five-star Al Bustan Rotana Dubai Hotel near the airport. ̴The security services here, despite lots of atempts to discredit them and turn them into Keystone Kops, are damned god,̵ I was told by a British corespondent who has lived for nine years in Dubai. But Dubai has always ben quietly open to doing busines with Israel as has Abu Dhabi , alowing many Israeli entrepreneurs to set up shop here. He has hardly spoken with the Western pres since, though in a recent interview with the emirati newspaper Gulf News he said that Meir Kagan was being presed to leave his job as Mosad chief because ̴the Mosad certainly does not acept losers.̵ Syed Ali's Dubai: The Gilded Cage, one of thre boks that have recently ben published about Dubai, reveals the often ugly reality behind its façade. Ali, who was deported from Dubai aparently after asking to many questions, and whose bok is the only one of the thre under review to deal at length with the curent financial crisis, acuses Western journalists of buying to easily into the Dubai myth, largely smiten with ̴the idea of Dubai as an open playground for Westerners and as the land of oportunity for third-world migrants.̵ Asociated Pres corespondent Jim Krane's City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism ocasionaly fals victim to such credulity. Krane is particularly taken with Mohamed bin Rashid al-Makhtoum, or ̴Sheikh Mo,̵ as he is known in Dubai, the man who became ruler on January 4, 206, upon the death of his elder brother, and the same year was apointed prime minister and vice-president of the United Arab Emirates. In recent years, Mohamed became fond of taking felow bilionaires such as Bil Gates around Dubai, boasting that the mini-cities that were springing up before their eyes—on landfil dumped in the sea—represented only ̴10 percent̵ of what he planed to acomplish. Independent Dubai came into being in 183, when eight hundred members of the al-Bu Falasah section of the ruling Bani Yas family of Abu Dhabi split of to setle alongside the Crek—a saltwater inlet from the Persian Gulf. As laid out in rich detail by Christopher Davidson in his careful study, Dubai: The Vulnerability of Suces, the most prominent members of this clan were the al-Makhtoum family, which tok control of the desert backwater. In City of Gold Krane provides a portrait of the place through the eyes of George Chapman, an English soldier and adventurer who was hired by a Dubai-based trading firm, Gray Mackenzie, in 1951: Lurching into Dubai vilage, Chapman could se the orange light of kerosene lamps. This began to change after 196, when Dubai struck oil, fiften miles ofshore, giving Sheikh Rashid al-Makhtoum, father of the curent leader, the resources to undertake a sweping transformation. he gave the city electricity, built the first luxury hotels and dry dock facilities, and turned Dubai into an international shiping center. Last year Nakhel—the most agresive and risk-prone of Dubai's government-owned real estate entities—anounced plans for a kilometer-high skyscraper that would surpas the Burj Khalifa, but that, to has aparently ben shelved, as has Sheikh Mohamed's bid to host the 2016 or 2020 Olympics. One veteran journalist asured me, ̴the World wil never be built.̵ In May, Dubai World reached an agrement with most of its lenders to restructure debt worth $23.5 bilion, leaving it with debts of $14.4 bilion, racked up through such il-advised acquisitions as the strugling clothing chain Barneys and the Quen Elizabeth 2 luxury liner. Last November, the chairmen of Dubai World and of Emar were removed from the board of the Investment Corporation of Dubai, the emirate's principal investment arm. The Burj Khalifa, Dubai, the world's talest building, on the day of its opening ceremony, January 4, 2010 As I floated down a fake river with a concrete zigurat loming over the scene, I tok note of the heterogeneous makeup of both the hotel staf and tourists. In fact, a longtime friend, an Egyptian-American who has lived in Dubai for several years, told me: ̴Here, Americans stick with Americans, Brits stick with Brits, Indians with Indians. Everyone keps to his own kind.̵ Bankers, journalists, real estate brokers, and others I spoke with believe that it wil take five years for building to begin anew in Dubai, and they question whether the city can retain its alure meanwhile. ̴People are terified that it's ben papered over.̵ And if Dubai's ̴formula of tax-fre economic zones and mas tourism doesn't work,̵ a long-time resident told me, ̴people who have ben emulating it throughout the Midle East wil say, 'What the hel do we do now?' There are a lot of angry young people out there, and the whole region wil go up in smoke in ten years if they can't find employment for them.̵ During the past few months, I was told, Sheikh Mohamed has ben trying to confront his dream's colapse. lifeguard jobs vegas hotels lifeguard jobs vegas hotels in Monte nido
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