Thoughts on Dubai

Recently the wife and I spend a long-ish weekend in Dubai.  Should you wish, you can view the pictures from our trip here on my Flickr account.  I liked Dubai, but I don't see myself returning there anytime soon.

The best way that I can think of how to explain it is to say that Dubai is a city without a soul.  For example, Paris has a romantic soul, Madrid has a laid-back soul, Rome has an ancient soul and Dublin has a drunken (and fun) soul.  Dubai is nothing but sand and tall buildings. At times, this is something that creates stark beauty.

Burj Khalifa

Dubai Marina

And, at times, it's something that just creates blah.

A Dubai Street

One of the more interesting dynamics, to me, was the UAE's attempts to juxtapose traditional Islamic culture with Western influences.  To me, this picture (taken by my wife) is the best representation of that problem.

A pork shop in Dubai Mall

Of all the locations in Dubai my favorite was Deira, the old part of town, where you find the Souks. It felt the most traditional in a city that's wiped away all of its tradition in the name of progress.

Deira

The Gold Souk

Given all of the attention paid to the malls, I think it's safe to say the Dubai Mall knocks the pants off of the Mall of the Emirates, as a matter of fact it's not even close.  The Dubai Mall is laid out better, it has better attractions and is much more open in design.  If you click on the picture link above you'll see several pictures from the Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo that, and Deira obviously, was a highlight of the trip.

Mall of Dubai waterfall

Finally, if you ever wonder why people have a negative image of American food, I give you the American food section at the grocery store inside the Dubai Mall.

Old El Paso and Newman's Own.

Yum.

On the technical, travel side, we flew United Airlines from IAH, laying over at IAD both coming and going. The United lounge at IAD is OK, at DXB, before departure, we were given access to the Lufstansa lounge, it was tiny but well stocked.  While we were there the band Everclear came in, as they were on our same flight back to the States.  Unfortunately, my camera was stowed so I have no pictures.  I will say this, based on our limited time getting to talk with them they are a very nice groups of guys.  Really enjoyed speaking with them for the few minutes we did.

We stayed at the Sheraton in Deira Creek, which I booked on Hotels.com for around $150/night.  It was a nice hotel with very good customer service, six restaurants (the two we tried were good) and four bars.  The cover band that plays at the Marbles bar on various nights is outstanding.  The guitar player can play almost anything, and the three ladies and one guy doing vocals gives them the range to not make a dog's breakfast out of almost any song.  One lady even did a very solid version of Whitney Houston's "I will always love you" which is a hard song to sing.

Since you're in Dubai, be aware that there is no alcohol service before 6PM in any bar, even the ones at the hotels, and prices are high.  Food in Dubai, unless you're eating at one of the many Indian/Pakistani locals dives are expensive. I highly recommend popping into one of the sticky-floor joints where the local workers eat.  The food there is inexpensive and tastier than most of what's on offer at the higher-end establishments.

Speaking of the workers, I'm aware that Dubai has a horrible reputation for how it allows it's workers to be treated and you can see that on their faces.  If you want to see an example of no hope, take a look at the grunt-workers in Dubai.  If Dubai as a city is soulless the immigrant workforce is even more so.  As an Emirati, or an expat from a developed nation, life can be pretty good, it's very common to see Ferrari's and other luxury cars on the roads, if you're a manual laborer from a developing country however, life appears to be pretty Spartan. 

As I stated earlier, I enjoyed Dubai, but have no desire to return.  But the wife and I did want to see it before it's gone.  The fact is the UAE is rapidly running out of oil.  They're trying to re-invent themselves as a financial/travel destination but I don't see that having long-term staying power. Historically however I think the odds are against them. If history in this region has taught us anything, it's that the desert always wins.

Only if you believe good government = more government does this make sense.

The Texas Tribune, continuing their drive to get Texans to pay Carol Alvarado a living wage, raises a question today:

Do Over votes in Texas Legislature raise questions. Aman Batheja, Texas Tribune

The Texas Legislature took three high-profile mulligans last month. Twice in the House and once in the Senate, a majority of lawmakers voted one way on a bill or amendment, only to quickly turn around and vote the other way.

The incidents raise a troubling question: Are lawmakers regularly voting on legislation they don't understand?

The underlying theme is that, due to the Lege's part-time status, our elected representatives are running around willy-nilly casting votes on bills they haven't read, nor do they fully understand.  The obvious answer to this is to greatly expand the Texas government, pay them a competitive salary obviously, and expand them to full-time status.

All of the arguments for expansion (ethics, uninformed votes etc.) lose water when you realize that the US Congress IS full time and they are often worse than the part-time Texas congress in all of these areas.

Sure, it's tough for a news-ish political site to fill the required inches of column space given that the lege is only in session for 3-4 months every two years, but their desire to have more to opine on is a terrible reason to increase Texas government spending by Billions.

Public Transit in Houston.

Presented with only one comment.  This is behind the Chron's paywall so I'm only going to quote a very small piece (which I believe is keeping with the spirit of fair use) and encourage you to go read the whole thing.


US Transportation Chief: Houston needs to 'get it's act together' on Light Rail. Dug Begly, HoustonChronicle.com

LaHood said the area is coming up short because more hasn't been done to extend lines to the suburbs where most people live.

He said he spent the morning in Houston talking about projects to extend transit farther from the downtown area. Suburban taxpayers who supported referendums in 2003 and 2012 especially have demonstrated a desire for development, only to have officials shortchange them

"The fact that these people voted for a referendum and are paying these taxes and have never seen any benefit from it is just not right," LaHood said.


Read more: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/U-S-transportation-chief-Houston-needs-to-get-4481101.php#ixzz2S963ptyp

My comment: I can't believe I actually agree with LaHood.

The scary thing is, some people take these rankings seriously.

Houston is the 9th happiest city for young professionals.  At least, it is if you take this report from Forbes' Magazine seriously:

Happiest cities for young professionals. Jacquelyn Smith. Forbes.com via Yahoo!

The problem, as I see it, is that none of the "criteria for happiness' have anything to do with the cities themselves:

Young professionals, defined by CareerBliss as employees with less than 10 years' experience in a full-time position, were asked to evaluate ten factors that affect workplace happiness. Those include one's relationship with the boss and co-workers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and control over the work one does on a daily basis.

In other words: the rankings are for a companies, and have been inappropriately applied to municipalities in order to....?

One guesses in order for certain groups to run ragged with (faulty) results to suggest that if only more green space/public transportation/arts/trendy restaurants were added (preferably in the central core) their fair city would move up the ranks.

In reality, this is a survey of corporate culture.  But that won't stop the unproductive class from using as proof of case that Something! Must be done.  Nor will it stop Texas Lock Step Political Media from reporting it incorrectly as well.

*sigh*

Tesla is a sprint. I prefer to take a longer view.

There's been a lot of breathless adoration over Tesla Motors of late and it's pretty easy to see why.  Their latest vehicle, The Model S, is a pretty little thing to look at which has (mostly) led to it being named the "Car of the year" by Motor Trend Magazine. Sure they gush about it's handling, it's power, it's storage space etc. But then you have to take into consideration that this is the same organization which named the horrible Chrysler 300 their car of the year in 2005, and gave the equally terrible Ford Thunderbird the nod in 2002.  They've also honored the PT Cruiser and the Chysler Cirrus with the award, so read into that what you will.  Seen a lot of Volt's around lately?

I understand what you're thinking here, that I'm just negative toward Tesla because I hate the environment and want to ensure that the internal combustion engine continues adding to the world's pollution ad nauseum.  You can think that, but you would not be further from reality.

The reason I'm not enamored with Tesla, Fisker (RIP), the Volt, the Insight or the Prius is that I feel they're all barking up the wrong eco-tree.  At the end of the day the power from all of these cars comes from an electrical grid which is, for the forseeable future, driven by coal and other fossil fuels.  Nevermind the extremely carbon-unfriendly processes that are needed to construct the vehicles in the first place.

No, the real future in the automobile industry is Hydrogen fuel cell technology that doesn't require the burning (mostly) of fossil fuels and for which the only emissions are H2O.  Hyundai is already mass producing them, and Honda has a fleet running around California right now.  Compared to these vehicles plug-in electrics are really just fanciful toys for the smug. They make a certain type feel superior but don't do much in the way of weaning us off fossil fuels for transportation.

Not that I think we're in imminent danger of 'running out of oil' as the Peak Oil theorists suggest.  Will oil require some creative technology to extract in the future?  Sure.  But we've already seen that in the fracking boom, an event that the Peak theorists didn't take into consideration in their initial modelling runs.  I do believe that it's going to continually become more expensive to extract oil however, so I think we need to reserve as much oil as possible for it's true societal benefit: plastics.  That's right, plastics.  Without fossil fuels we wouldn't have many of the medical and technological advances we enjoy today, so we need to ensure that what we are pulling out of the ground is allocated correctly.

All of this brings us to today's bit of speculative blogging regarding the future of Tesla:

Is Tesla the next Apple or Google? Dan X. McGraw, ChronBlog

Tesla is riding a wave of optimism, making some hedge fund managers question whether the electric carmaker could follow in the footsteps of Google or Apple.
Investment firm Longboard Asset Management believes the automaker's stock will be selling for $200 per share within the next five years. The firm said Wall Street is currently underestimating the car company's brand and unfairly tying it Solyndra, the failed solar panel company.

Short-term, I think yes, given the amount of buzz surrounding the company, Tesla's stock will continue to rise because people want it to. They're currently churning out the best product in the entire business segment and there are plenty of people who purchase stuff to increase their perceived social standing to keep them in business for a while.  Where the hot Hollywood car was once the Prius, I see the Tesla taking over that role in short order.

Long-term however I think their fame clock is already reading 14:59.  Once some entrepreneurial sort figures out how to convert Hydrogen to fuel in a cheaper manner, and convinces companies (and the government) to buy into building infrastructure, I see the demise of the plug-in electric car coming suddenly.  While you plug in your car to your home to charge it up currently, there could be a time you plug your car into your home to turn on your living room lights and run the TV.  That's a pretty big difference right there.

A difference that convinces me plug-in electrics are just the wrong way to go long-term.  For that reason I don't see the Tesla rising out of niche status, unless I've missed where they're embracing the Hydrogen future.

As we stumble toward the 2014 Texas political season

Something to remember come election time in 2014.

Potential Lt. Governor candidate (and Current State Comptroller) Susan Combs released $29.3 Million dollars of taxpayer money to the father of this lady:

Tamara Ecclestone bares all for Playboy. Celebrity Buzz, Chronblog

The billionaire daughter of Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone has bared all for Playboy.
Tamara Ecclestone, dubbed The Diamond Heiress by editors of the men’s magazine, graces the cover of the May issue, lying naked with her intimate areas covered by sparkling gems.

Remember that, and that she has difficulties with the basic function of her current job, oversaw the department when a huge data breach came about and imposed the Amazon Tax on Texas taxpayers the next time she runs her fiscal conservatism up the electoral flag pole.

What's really sad is, due to the dearth of serious candidates Texas Democrats are putting on the slate, should she win the (R) primary there's a good chance she beats whatever fodder Battleground Texas selects as her opposition.