Dubai Or Not Dubai

I was recently on a work trip to Dubai, my first to that city. Over the course of 3 nights and 2 days, we went around the city and of course, did some work and discovered bits and pieces of this gem in the Persian Gulf. But as I landed on the plane back home, I felt compelled to write this little rant about why Singapore is better than Dubai. 

1. The airport immigration at DXB sucks. We got in at peak hour about 6pm and proceeded to wait an hour to get through customs. When it was my turn, the machine wouldn't read my passport. The guy tried a few times before handing me off to another counter. Maybe it was a one-off but the wait was exasperating. And guess what, we waited 40 minutes to clear customs on the way out! Come on, twice?! The only positive I could eke out was that the queues weren't right next to each other. People might have passed out being that close to one another. Singapore airport immigration is pretty chop-chop. 

2. The city's colour scheme is mostly sand and concrete. It's a little boring during the day. My Dubai agency friend felt the same, that the colours of the city were best experienced in night time neon and sparkle. The whole Palm area seems to be made of the same sand. A little variety would stop things being too generic. The building designs are great but nothing sticks out like the Burj Khalifa. The Singapore city skyline is a kaleidoscope of shape, size and colour. It dissipates a certain vibrancy. I didn't get that from Dubai. Certainly the WOW factor but not anything more to the big picture. 

3. There seems to be nothing old in Dubai besides some people. In their hurry to modernise maybe the city planners didn't think about keeping some heritage prominent. There many fancy office buildings and malls but nothing quaint and historic to remind one of the past. I saw some mosques, maybe 3 or 4, with their minarets and crescent moons perched above. That's it. There's thankfully a better mix in Singapore. Maybe we were 'lucky enough' to have a colonial past and European style buildings and city planners that had paid attention to history lessons. The mix of old and new lends character to my island nation. 

4. It's all malls in Dubai. They are huge and monstrous. They swallow you up and you get lost in the belly of the beast. It envelopes you and doesn't want to let go. Everyone runs to the malls here. I'm not a shopper so I wasn't too excited to check out one mall after the other. Good thing our friend guide knew and took us to some attractions within the malls - the huge aquarium in Dubai Mall and Dubai Ski at Mall Of The Emirates. I don't know if things are cheap or at a bargain. The girls might know better. The stuffed camel and other trinkets I purchased weren't exactly rock-bottom priced. 

5. I don't know if this is true but I sense a great deal of hedonism in Dubai. The malls with high-end brands, the big fast cars, the fat main Sheikh Zayed Road with 7 or 8 lanes, the billboards with displays of ostentation - they just bother me. Maybe it's also because no one but the tourists pay tax. Not many seem to care about cost of water or electricity or oil. Glam is the way to go whatever the cost. I wonder if there is an environmental awareness program in place. The hotel I was in had a towel reuse sign. Maybe life isn't as hard there and folks are just milking it. In Singapore, we're reminded about our water and electricity use, and made to pay for these essentials. 

6. The sand is just everywhere. 

7. There isn't enough green going around. The beach area around the Westin is lush with foliage while the rest of Dubai is concrete and sand. It'll make the city more hospitable if more trees were planted where people lived and worked. 

That's it I think. Here are four reasons why Dubai rocks. 

1. Service culture is great. The shop and restaurant staff I encountered  were friendly, accommodating, patient and in some cases funny. 

2. There's a bit of an "anything is possible" attitude. It about confidence, creativity and excitement.   

3. There's a traffic law where the authorities impounded the offending vehicle for a month at a cost to the owner. Punishment! Also they have SMS based parking fares that go into  the driver's phone bill while in Singapore we tear appear coupons. Lame lah. 

4. The breads, humus, fattoush and tabbouleh are awesome. Omnomnomnom burp! Oh, mint in lemonade is brilliant. 

I Just Wanna Go Home

There are so many issues with Singapore's taxi system that it'll hopefully boggle the LTA folks when they try to "simplify" things. Good luck. I got one if my peeves about taxi fares published in the Straits Times today (snippet right at the bottom) about different fare jumps between regular and premium taxis. But the key thing I guess the gahmen fails to realise is that the current system makes us all unhappy. Seriously unhappy. When we want a taxi, they're never around. Sometimes when you call to book one, you can't get one. So all the money we make can't get us a ride home or to work or to the airport. Or yoga in my case. I waited 40 minutes roadside last week, having given myself an hour to get to class. So my opportunity cost went up in smoke as the longer I waited, the later I would be to class and yet more likely I would get a taxi. I almost went home. I eventually missed 10 minutes of breathing and stretching. I should have just taken a train. I get more upset when I want to take a cab home from working late. They whizz by like nobody's business waiting for a booking to come in to make the additional $3 fare. Customers simply gawk jaws dropped at green lights on blue bodies escaping their reach. How are Singaporeans supposed to live happier lives and have more kids when they can't even get home easily after a long work day? It's just ridiculous. Attitudes tied to profit. The hardest to fix. Have I complained about this before? Well probably.

Writing From An Army Bed

I am lying on my bed in my army bunk in my second week of reservist training. I have showered and powdered my self to comfortably feel at ease. My feet and shins itch though from the unease if being in tight socks encased in snug boots for a good 16 hours. It is 1043pm. There aren't many thoughts running through my head. I am a little tired though perhaps not from any physical strain. There was a bit of to and fro with helping the management plan their activities and recruit understudies. I am hopefully in my final year here having recently turned the ripe old age of 39. The planning help I render requires a bit of brain power - some EQ, some IQ, a little creativity and sometimes sheer determination and steadfastness and a smidgen of sell-in. Otherwise there are templates. I co-opted a few wannabes into this mess hoping they might want to carry on with this next time around. I don't know, maybe I have led them into greater misery. Outside there maybe regular physical stress and manual labour. Here's a semi-cushy time in air-conditioned rooms facing captains and colonels testing their whims and fancies, watching military management runs its course, drawing and typing and measuring and listening. I'll ask them tomorrow. And tomorrow we venture out to the jungles of Singapore, on a mission no less! I should get some mud on my boots and grass on my face for the last time. It's been a hoot folks. I hope to get some shut eye for what promises to be a roller coaster of a day. 

Back To Camp

I'm going back to the army tomorrow. For two whole weeks, I'll be in camouflage and hanging with a bunch of guys I only see once a year. I have met a few of them in 'real life' but those fleeting moments don't amount to much. I use 'real life' because in the army, it's not quite what people are used to. I tell people that going back mostly means using a part of my brain that I don't use at work. Or sometimes not use my brain at all. It's the army, so you just follow instructions. It can be as simple as that. Tomorrow I need to report in uniform with my field pack at 0730. Step 1. What happens next is purely up to my officers and sergeants. I'm in the logistics side of things and we're meant to support the big guns heading out to battle. Water, food, ammo and medical. It isn't as exciting as it sounds. Usually there's quite a bit of prep, a lot of waiting, some confusion, then a flurry of action, and then it's over. There's lots of cookhouse and sometimes canteen food consumed in between.  Out in the field, we'll have rations. I usually consume too many oversweet fruit bars. I also have a tendency to come back injured or diseased. The injury is back related and the last disease I picked up was a fungal infection around my toes. It happens. In addition to all these, there's a lot of silly conversation. I am looking forward to chatting about government issues, housing prices, car troubles, wife and kid problems, holiday plans, stock market options, people we don't like in camp, the old ways of doing things, the new gadgets we have, and whatever else the newspaper flipping throws up. I am not looking forward to waking up at 5am, the long journeys to camp or the work emails that'll pile up. This is the Singaporean life.