#15.1 Dubai

• Yesterday I talked my way into a private tour of the The Burj Al Arab, supposedly the world’s best hotel. Normally you have to pay $100 just to get through the front door. Silliest detail? They have a "pillow menu" allowing you, to choose from 13 different kinds of "deluxe bedroom head rests." My favourite is the "vitamin E pillow", that allows you to improve your skin as you sleep. Most expensive room? A cool $13,616 a night.
• Dubai has a diving industry, of sorts. Unfortunately, the sandy underwater terrain is not tremendously interesting. Such that there is being made worse by the environmental damage caused by constructions of the various Palms, the World, and the rest. Not to be deterred, the diving school at the Palm Jumeirah – the smaller of the three palm islands - are planning to create an artificial “dive park” by sinking a few trains and a plane into the sea. Just in case that isn’t enough they plan frequently to drop a 1KG bar of gold onto the seabed, as an incentive.
• Justice in the UAE works in strange ways. It’s a fairly liberal place, but some odd laws remain. Ex-Pats like to tell stories of deportations for holding hands, jailing for kissing in public, lashings for drunkenness and so forth, most of which probably are not true. But this story, involving the punishments meted out to a husband, his wife and her lover in the neighbouring state of Sharjah, is truly unbelievable:
  "1. The 24-year-old Moroccan wife . Crime: "private time with a man", alcohol consumption. Punishment: 3 months in jail, 80 lashes, deportation
  2. The 43-year-old Emirati lawyer lover. Crime: "private time with a woman", alcohol consumption. Punishment: 3 months in jail, 70 lashes
  3. The 33-year-old Jordanian man. Crime: stabbing the lawyer at least thirty times with a kitchen knife. Punishment: 3 months in jail"
• [Quote taken from this blog, which links to the full story.]
• Other odd laws. Skype, Flickr and MySpace are all reported to be banned. Happily, all seem to be working fine. Cohabitation is illegal. All cars bought in the emirate produce a loud electronic beeping noise when the driver goes over 120kph, the legal limit.
  

#15 Dubai

• Dubai is often described as the fastest growing city in the world. To get a sense of this, compare the the same pictures of Sheikh Zaheed road - the main drag, now in places a 14 lane highway - in 1991 and 2005. Note the 4 buildings in both pictures.
  

• The city must surely also be the largest construction project in the history of man, with daunting levels of building work ongoing. A commonly quoted statistic: "about 30000, or 24 per cent of the world's 125000 construction cranes, are currently operating in Dubai."
• More than 90% of the UAE are ex-pats. Of these, by far the largest group are British. There are roughly 100,000 Brits in Dubai, in a population of around 1.5m.
• By 2010 the population will have grown to 2m.
  
• Oil and oil services made up 7% of Dubai’s GDP in 2003. By 2010 this will make up around 1%.

• Dubai is currently building 4 giant reclaimed island archipelagos: 3 "palms", and 1 “world”. The first and smallest palm is close to completion. The picture above shows it, from the top of the Burj Hotel (click on it for more detail.) The second, the Palm Jebel Ali, will begin construction next year. This palm, unlike the first, will include a series of man made islands in the shape of Arabic letters. When completed they will form a giant poem, written by Shaikh Mohammad. The poem reads

Take wisdom from the wise
It takes a man of vision to write on water
Not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey
Great men rise to greater challenges.”

[cf - a hi res pic of the second palm, poem and all]

Lahore

• Sheep in Pakistan have splendid ears. [Spotted in old Lahore. More pics here. ]
• 80% of car’s in Lahore run on compressed natural gas.
  
• Six indigenous films were made in Pakistan last year. Bollywood films are banned to protect the native industry, yet are commonly available (along with Hollywood blockbusters) pirated on cable and satellite channels. Pakistani cinema owners are about to go on a nationwide strike, claiming that unless the government cracks down on piracy and allows people in Pakistan watch Indian films such cinemas as have not yet been turned into malls will soon go under.
  
• The Supreme Court Chief Justice of Pakistan was sacked during my visit, with riots a street away from my hotel. Banning kite flying ranked among his least popular recent decisions. Improvements in kite technology now make fallen strings lethal, killing scores of drivers and pedestrians during major festivals. The ban was lifted during this year's major kite flying festival in Lahore, at which ten people died and a hundred or so were injured due to "kite related injuries". [Conversation with Hotel owner. More details here.]
  
• There is an ongoing conflict between Pakistan and India for control over Siachen, a glacier of little strategic importance but lying around 22,000 Ft above sea level. Maintaining soldiers on the glacier costs India $1m a day, while Pakistan pays about $650,000. A ceasefire has been in force since 2003, creating what you might call a cold war.
• The village of Dara Adam khel, near Pesharawa close to the Afghan Border, is the centre of Pakistan’s illicit arms manufacturing industry. Of its 80,000 residents some 20,000 are employed in making weapons for export, predominantly to Muslim fighters around the world. [See this for more.]
• 1 in 2 Pakistanis are under 15.
  
• Amount given to Pakistan in aid by the US since 2001: $10bn. Amount including likely covert ops through CIA etc: nearer to $20bn. Amount given to education projects? Around $150m.
  
  

#13 Bombay (again)

• Classified ads are different here.
  
• There is only one cash point machine in Afghanistan. [UK Foreign Office travel advisory for Kabul, where i am no longer going.]
• The Indian Government is moving ahead with outsourcing. It has already out-sourced its visa processing services at certain overseas embassies, including London. But now, in a neat reversal of what one might expect, it now plans to out-source “visa collection and delivery services” to an American company, at is embassy in Washington DC. As noted in the Times of India: “Until now Indians were taking away American jobs.….”
• As noted previously, Male, the capital of the Maldives, is the most densely populated city in Asia. Mumbai is the second, with about 30,000 people per square KM. However, there is a part of mid-town Bombay where the population density tops 1m people per square mile, likely the most densely populated place on earth. [see list]
  
• Bombay commuter trains are built for a capacity of 1500 people. At peak hours they carry up to 4500. I went on one the other day, and felt rather brave.
• You are not allowed to take pictures on Indian trains, in case you sell the information to terrorists, or Pakistanis.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selected_cities_by_population_density
• Three fun small world moments from my time in Mumbai.

1. Kirsten Bound from the think tank Demos says I should meet Anand Giridharadas, the South Asia writer for the International Herald Tribune in Mumbai. I find myself randomly talking to him in a coffee shop, before she has time to make the introduction.
2. I am sitting in the office with my friend Pablo Jenkins, having just sent an e-mail to Nadaa Tayib, someone I’d been introduced by a friend in Bangkok. She receives my e-mail while she is talking to Pablo on the other line for the first time, having met neither of the two of us before, and having been introduced to Pablo through someone completely different..
3. Later, I meet Nadaa at an art gallery. After an hour we realise she used to come over to my house in Davis Square, Cambridge, to work with my former roommate Ben, two years ago.

• Neat idea: newspaper vending machines. Neater insight: finding out exactly how low labour costs are in India. They employ a man to sit next to the machine, to put your coins in for you, and give you the paper.
• Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words.

12.2 Cochin, Kerala

• I can't help but think that the tried and tested "the jewish quarter" might have been a better choice, but there you are. The signs above are from the historic quarter of Cochin, Kerala.
• A working elephant in India cost 5-10 lakhs, or roughly $10-20,000. This is about the same price as an entry-level car.
• Gasoline in India costs roughly $4 a gallon. This is about the same price as in the UK, but much more than in the US. Refreshingly, some trucks have painted signs on their rear reading: “Save Gasoline; Save India.”
• The community of Keralans living in America numbers roughly half a million. Three quarters are Christian, compared to only a thirds of Keralans in India.
  
• The more muted the sari, the more likely the women is to have means. The more vibrant, the more likely to be from a lower class background.
• I am going to Dubai in a few weeks. This is what my friend Will Davies had to say about it in an e-mail exchange; a quote too good not to share:
  
  "Dubai is far and away the worst place in the world, so well worth a visit. Vegas without the sin; Milton Keynes with less history; Saudi Arabia with less charm; Barclays Bank with less concern for the poor. The place exists for shopping, golf, property speculation and tax avoidance. An ideal day for a Dubai resident involves playing golf in the shopping mall that they are subletting to their accountant.”
  
• This article by Mike Davis on Dubai is really worth a read. He takes the best quote from someone I’ve never heard, Baruch Knei-Paz, describing a theory of Trotsky’s:
  
  In appending new forms the backward society takes not their beginnings, nor the stages of their evolution, but the finished product itself. In fact it goes even further; it copies not the product as it exists in its countries of origin but its ‘ideal type’, and it is able to do so for the very reason that it is in a position to append instead of going through the process of development. This explains why the new forms, in a backward society, appear more perfected than in an advanced society where they are approximations only to the ‘ideal’ for having been arrived at piecemeal and with the framework of historical possibilities.
  
• By 2010 7 of the 10 largest malls in the world will be in China. However, both the two largest will be in Dubai. [ibid]
• John Edwards likes to say that China will soon become the largest English speaking country in the world. Can this really be true?
• Hinduism has a refreshingly practical bent. According to its theology cows are the only animals in heaven. This is because the Gods need milk.
• My new favourite Hindu god: Ganesha. He has the head of an elephant. He is very charming, and people like him here very much. Shrines and pictures of him always include a mouse. Said mouse is his trusty steed; to be mounted when when he needs to, er, pack his trunk and travel. [See here for some pics of him.]
  

#12.1 Kerala

• The red flag flies still over the state of Kerala. However, it seems this has little to do with the state’s world-renowned high literacy rate, whose history can be traced long before Independence and the beginning of independent political parties. For instance, the female literacy rate was “31.5% in Kerala in 1951 as against just 7.9 in India as a whole.” Much as in West Bengal – the other Indian state with periodic bouts of quasi-Marxist Government - it seems more likely that a literate population created the conditions for successful communism, rather than the other way round. [see here for some relevant-ish background]
• Instead, the difference seems to be routed in a different aspect of its history: Kerala's Christianity. More than 1/3rd of the state is Christian, most of that catholic. Early literacy programmes were begun by Christian missionaries. Latterly the State - unable properly to fund education - left it relatively open to the private sector (specifically NGOs in the school sector) to fill the gap. Christian groups were better able to raise funds for schools (largely from abroad), especially compared to Hindus groups in other states who lack an organised church, an active buearocracy and, perhaps most importantly, a body of rich people from whom they could solicit donations.
• A practical consequence of Kerala’s high literacy rate: people asking for money on the state’s train system carry printed cards explaining their reduced circumstances. The cards are double sided: English on one side, local language on the other.

• There are lots of good book shops here too. How sad that my bag never grows bigger.
  
• Unusually pointless Indian regulations, a continuing series: the government bans its airlines from using derivatives to hedge against fuel price fluctuation.
• Last year Indians bought 5m PCs, and 1m Laptops. In the US annual PC sales are roughly 60m. I can’t quite decide, given that, if 5m is a lot, or not.
• Sun Microsystems last week held its largest ever software development conference in Hyderabad, India’s second most successful IT hub. The sold-out event was held in the country’s largest conference centre, and more than 10,000 developers paid R1000 to attend. It was described in one paper as “the largest gathering of ‘Indian techies’ ever.”

#12 Kerala

• In India it isn’t rude to stare. More interestingly, people quite happily stare at others using gadgets in public places, in this case a (fairly loud) five minute hindi music video on a commuter train.
• Between 25,000 and 100,000 Indian farmers commit suicide annually. [Report in The Hindu].
  
• Wal-Mart is keen to open stores in India. Yet logistical bottle necks resulting from poor infrastructure are sufficiently severe to lead some to question whether the business model of big-box retail can even function here. For instance, the average western hypermarket carries at least than 35,000 product lines. No shops in India yet carry more than about 10-15,000. [Story in the Business Standard, they of the previously remarked upon unfortunate by-line policy.]
• Likely silly Indian regulations, the first in a series: "The Indian government did somewhat relax its FDI rules earlier this year, allowing "single-brand" retailers such as Nike or Gucci to own 51 percent of their business operations in India. However, this still precludes Wal-Mart, since the retailer sells a variety of brands in its stores." [Article on CNN.]
  
• As previously reported, India has only 35m income tax payers. However, in 1990, they had only 4m. 35m, out of a population of some c1 billion+, is good.
  
• Kerala. Upside: Pleasing beaches, sleepy canals. Downside: tedious westerners in indian garb - patterned tops, flappy orange trousers, head scraves, etc - going on about ashrams, and needing a foundation for their yoga practice. Its enough to make you yearn for palid twenty somethings in sharp glasses talking earnestly about social capital. Hang on. Perhaps I’ve found myself after all?